The first time I tried to make baklava, it did not taste like home.  

It had only been nine short months since we said I do. It was the holiday season, and I wanted our home to feel like home. Yes, we have the tree and the gifts and the wreath. But but where I come from, is it even New Year’s without baklava?

I wanted the familiar. The comfort. The smell that tells you you belong here.  

I could not articulate any of that. I just longed for the three-days-of-made-from-scratch baklava that means it is the holiday season. And hey –  I had seen it made dozens of times before. I knew. I knew how it was done.

Except… I didn’t. I didn’t know.

Because some recipes you don’t follow.
Some recipes you feel.

I was feeling all confident – on the outside. On the inside there was this big gap in my heart – the kind you get when you cross time zones. And I was tired. The kind of tired that comes when you are growing a life inside of you.

Something about hormones and homesickness and I had this big gap in my heart – the one you get when you cross time zones. I think they call it jetlag.

I had heart jetlag.

Part of my heart here – in this time zone, this oneness we were learning, this knowing and being known, and this tiny life growing inside me.  

And part of my heart was back ‘home’.

Mom says baklava takes seventy layers. I remember it being a lot of layers.

But seventy?! That’s a lot of ones.

One by one I tried. But my attempts at spreading the dough into large thin circles looked like something a five year might draw. The dough had a mind of its own, taking all kinds of shapeshifting forms.

And it didn’t feel right. It smelled foreign and it stuck to my fingers. It did not taste like home.

But really, I was wrong.

And I wish someone had told me that each home has its one taste. That each home is simply love in the making. I just didn’t how many layers it would take before my eyes could truly see.    

Because what is home really?

Isn’t it mom and grandma kneading and rolling, and the whole house covered in flour? Layers and layers of phyllo dough resting on top of couches and chairs and coffee tables and every somewhat level surface waiting their turn to be baked. And the smell of crushed walnuts dad is mixing in with the freshly made melted butter.

That was home.

It had very little to do with how ‘real’ baklava tasted, and everything to do with the quiet knowledge that we belong together.

Home was the two of us laughing over my failed attempts to stretch the dough into thin circles. How in the world do you keep the silly thing from shapeshifting?

Home was our little apartment covered in flour after a tipped over bowl makes it snow across the kitchen floor. Home was the smell of something warm and fresh in the oven.

And that first bite – when I looked at him, shaking my head, ‘This tastes nothing like real baklava’. And we both laughed till we cried. And I did cry. ‘It’s the best one he’s had,’ he said. I knew he was lying.   

I didn’t think it tasted like home. But the truth is, I wanted our home to feel like home – and it did. I wanted the familiar. The comfort. The smell that tells back to you I know this feeling, it means you belong here.

Because home is the love we weave into the dicing of potatoes, and the washing of the squash and folding of laundry. Home is standing at the kitchen sink and washing the plates that you shared around the table. It’s silly jokes. Endless socks. Nerf balls you find in the strangest places.

Home is how they still expect you to tuck them in at night, even when they are taller than you. It’s how they come looking for you at 10:00pm because they need to talk, and you do just that.

It’s a million I’m sorrys and countless I choose to understand.

Really, home is this: I choose you.

Over and over again.

Not some institutionalized practice, but the quiet weaving of ordinary moments. A way of life, not steps to living. The very tapestry that holds the fragments of our lives together and softly echoes,we belong together.

And right there in that little apartment of ours – we did. 

That baklava didn’t taste like the one mom made.

But somehow,

it was still home.