This morning was full of optimism; the air smelled exactly how it does deep in Kiambu, transporting me to my room on the upper floor, opening the windows around 10:00 a.m., the second-last one to wake up to a silent house, and the smell of morning air after heavy rain occupied all my senses. The cool air on my face, the smell of earth and wet grass, the sound of the wind gently moving through the trees whose tops are at my eye level. I missed that place, the footsteps of my brother walking up and down the house, transporting his meal to his room; my sister covering her face with the blanket next to me, irritated slightly by the breeze from the open windows; the sound of the gardener sweeping the outside verandah and the househelp carrying utensils from one side of the garden to the kitchen or wherever else my dad had breakfast. My mum is usually locked in the study, having her virtual classes with a heightened paranoia of anyone walking in on her and hearing her in her teaching element, which she considers a highly intimate side of her that she doesn't let us in on.

But I'm somewhere in Fourways, just having fed Healy her breakfast, standing by the door to my garden, feeling both optimistic, sad, empty, and full. Staring down at my succulent that bloomed with bright yellow flowers for the second time since I got it as a gift last year, the dying mint plant that has survived multiple pest attacks, and the newly supported pilea that's adjusted really well to its makeshift trellis and every other pot on the floor in the tiled section of the verandah. Where it ends, the garden starts — the grass struggling to sprawl on the sections where Healy has relentlessly dug, and the shade from the tree has kept unhealthy moisture levels. The rain yesterday, the first in about three months, has left the ground smelling like Kiambu, yet there is something in that memory of home that keeps nagging at me.

It's the first of October, marking four months since I've been in my house for days on end, my little home in Johannesburg, roughly 4,000 km from my parents' home and 14 km from the old office that had an ongoing retrenchment, where I made the decision to leave. With the hope for something better, I started off my career break with only two items on my to-do list: to take a walk and to journal each morning. The change in seasons — flowers blooming, the cold winter behind us, and the dull days replaced by comfortably warm sunshine, birds returning to chirp noisily throughout the day, and butterflies and moths making frequent appearances — there's something bright, beautiful, and familiar in the air, yet there is also something else lurking in the shadows.

I was looking for a tech career, those four months back when I packed my office items into an empty cardboard box and walked to the parking lot one last time. My memory is already hazy, like a distant experience that happened in my childhood. My last days were filled with those annoying questions: "So, are you going back to Kenya? Have you found another job? Will you be in South Africa?" And like any other uncomfortable situation, I either retreat into myself and say absolutely nothing (which I regret later on and ruminate on other ways the conversation could have gone), or I come up with the closest thing to the truth — the omission of important details, a skill I mastered as a child. "I'll be around, and I'll find something to do." That was the flat answer I chose, and saying it over and over again started to weigh on me. I had had an interview two hours before I left the four-year company that I had worked for since I completed university. My very first "real" job had ended, and my next one was about to start — or so I thought.

At the beginning of this season, in June, I was eagerly anticipating my sister's visit; in the thick of winter, my only sibling would be here. Shared meals, grocery runs, drives to pointless destinations, sweet cravings satisfied together — waking up to someone else in my space after years of living alone was such a treat. Shared sorrows, fears of the future, and regrets of the past; crying together, sharing ambitions we're too afraid to say out loud — that was likely the first time I told anyone that I would like to write. Shared experiences of living in a post-apartheid society and the racial microaggressions we're too uncomfortable to talk about. Feeling the chilling weather, the bitterly cold nights, together. There was so much to look forward to, having my only sibling here — the best and sometimes only part of home I can connect to.

The seasons changed again, and I found myself in a new routine. Tuesdays from 11:00 a.m. I would be at the University, an hour's drive from my house. On Wednesdays and Fridays, I would be at a new role from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., 40 minutes away, and Mondays would be my rest days, while Thursdays would be remote school days. Then I began to spend less and less time in my house, with weekends dedicated to sitting in parks reading a book, knitting, or taking lazy walks with friends. The uncertainty of the career started to peel away, revealing unanswered questions about where I would like to call home, and what that really means. Is it to return to Kiambu, to live a walking distance away from my sister, to laugh so loudly that I disrupt the silence in a park, to live on a farm surrounded by bushes, nests, and flowers, and more animals for company? Perhaps it is also to be present in each little moment of the day — to hear children screaming when the school bell rings, to notice how different the sunrise sky looks from the sunset, to feel the terror from thunderstorm and lightning, to sing along to a favorite song and make up a dance move in the middle of a sad morning, to tell a friend I miss them and to say sorry when I speak to myself in a cruel tone. Maybe that's home. In paying attention to the difficult and easy feelings and taking a pause when the tension in my back and shoulders asks me to, and becoming better at listening to myself and others — maybe that's the all of home. Maybe it's about being at home with myself, acknowledging that sometimes when all exists starts to close, it could also be a chance to tidy this place up and feel at home.