I know that the sweetness of homecoming will wear off in a day or two. The design of my parents’ house—an oval path through kitchen, dining room, living room, hallway—makes privacy difficult to achieve. That, and my father’s disregard of boundaries: sitting in the living room, he’ll interrupt anyone else’s conversation, chore, reading, with whatever’s on his mind at any given moment. The anyone else is usually my mom, and the beckoning sounds like this: “Hey Fern, you’ve got to see this; let me read you this; I just thought of something.” During the evening news, the interruptions fly fast and frequent, with “Hey, Fern!” assaulting the ears like big-city sirens. It makes my mom cringe and pantomime strangling him, an act to which he, on the other side of the wall, is oblivious.

Beyond that, though, is the sinking into family life, the way the self spreads out thinner around the edges. As a single person, it’s pretty much all about me. Though a good friend and neighbor, a thoughtful and considerate conversationalist who tries to curb the tendency to interrupt others’ thoughts, speeches, and activities, my life is basically about doing whatever I want or need to do whenever I want or need to do it. Or think it. But within minutes of walking into my parents’ house I’m faced with the task of helping my mom explain to her hairdresser just exactly what should be done with her bangs: “Just look at them. What do I tell her?” I need to contribute to dinner ideas, figure out some schedule of running, practicing, eating: “What do you want for dinner? Anything I should pick up for you at the store? Any nights you won’t be home? What time do you eat breakfast?”. My habits and systems get slotted to fit into their schedule, and what was an organic process in New York becomes deliberate and a little desperate.

But for now, I just float in the warmth of that house, with its four seasons of light from every direction and golden floorboards, the comfortable clutter of objects and people who are so happy to have me back. When I read about homecomings, or watch films with that theme, there always seems to be an awkwardness when the prodigal child stiffly kisses her parents, sighs while unpacking in her childhood room, obviously feels overgrown in the once familiar surroundings. That’s never been the case for me. I always return home as myself, a more considerate person than when I left, at 18. Still a slob, but a slob who knows how to pick up after herself, an interrupter who has learned how to listen, an adult comfortable in the dual roles of daughter and grown-up. “When I think of you in New York,” says my mom, “You are so clearly there. Especially after we visited. Your apartment, your roommate, the street you live on. In my mind, that’s where you live. But when you come back here, it’s like you never left.”

I know exactly how she feels.