A Tough Day

This morning I woke up with a smile on my face. I was finally able to sleep in and got up at a very lazy 7:45 AM. I walked around upstairs doing odds and ends for a bit before going downstairs to find i had missed a phone call the night before from my mum. She called to lay down the line and demand (in a very nice way) that I book my ticket back to Utah. I don't think I would have been able to do it but she suggested that I book it as a return ticket so I can fly back to Boston to start our Westward-Ho Cross Country Trip.

I got on Delta.com and found my skymiles number. After a while I had found an itinerary that worked and cashed in the last of my skymiles - I figured they would expire before my mission was up anyway. The first itinerary I tried had me leaving on my birthday May 25 but that didn't feel right. The next itinerary tried May 24 but if i couldn't go to church that day there wasn't a real need to stay that long. I know my sister and brother-in-law desire this chance to live away from home and family and learn to depend on each other more, but for me it feels like giving up home. I finally decided on May 21. 

Most everyone won't understand my hesitation to go back to Utah. Its sometimes hard for me to understand it. But somehow in the last 2 years Massachusetts has become my home. Yesterday I tried to call my family and I dialed the wrong number. I had to look up the number - the same number I have had since I was 3. But then today at the mechanic I was able to rattle off my MA home number - a number I have only called once or twice. Also my GPS didn't survive the winter, but amazingly I haven't gotten lost yet. I finally know my way around and can get almost anywhere just by instinct. 

So what makes a home a home? Is it the location? I certainly have fallen in love with the ocean, lighthouses, rolling hills, dense colorful forests, winding streets, and cranberry fields. I laugh every time I almost run over a wild turkey and I tear up every time I see the sun set over Boston from the town of Hull. But Utah has its mountains, forests, and wildlife too so perhaps it isnt location.

It must be the people then. I love New Englanders with their "sour" ways. You will never find a people more devoted to their families, who work all their lives in whatever way they can to pass on whatever aid they can to their kids. The members here have gone beyond fellowship, I feel as if I have been adopted by more than one family. The YSA are terrific and when I came back on Thursday as soon as I was back with the YSA at Institute and flying kites in the park I felt as if I had never left. But my real family is in Utah, and I have old friends there too, so maybe it isn't always the people that make a place a home.

As I was sitting on the break wall at Cohasset beach tonight I was thinking of all this. Wondering how I could ever leave places and sights like Minot's Light and Fort Revere and knowing that only the call of the Lord, only a mission could entice me. I think the reason Massachusetts has become my home is because of my roots. I inherited lots of genes and qualities from my mum, but I am a Doggett through and through. I look around and I feel the tug of my ancestors, I can feel their attachment to this land, their love of these people and it becomes my own. Here where Doggetts have lived for generations, here is my home.