‘Home again, home again, jiggedeejog.’ My mother sang this whenever we returned home from a trip.

Most of our vacations were short jaunts to local theme parks where my brother and I enjoyed playing in the hotel room (a place where we didn’t have to make our beds and could throw wet towels on the bathroom floor!) more than riding the roller coasters and merry-go-rounds.

Later on, we’d spend a week at the shore in North Carolina where again, my brother and I seemed to have more fun running around the rented condo with its GoldenGirls-esque sea shell décor than sitting on the beach with our parents.

No matter where the trip, the best part was always coming home. We’d see the highway sign for the Salem exit and knew that we were almost there.

It smelled good, it felt even better, and somehow, the world got a little more quiet the closer we got to home. Home was a safe place for shoes to come off and sweats to be put on.

I just recently spent my first weekend away from Dillon. I drove to Coeur d’Alene for an academic conference. I had looked forward to this trip for months. Thet iming was perfect: I would be on block break from the university. I would stay at a luxurious hotel on the lake and treat myself to a massage at the resort’s famed spa. I would eat at a different restaurant every day.

And the shopping! Shoes and purses and skirts, oh my!

I booked Gracie (my cockatiel) into her spa (aka the vet hospital of Dillon),and hit the road with Liz Phair and Sheryl Crow blasting in my car speakers. With my shopping allowance burning a hole into my pocket, I hardly made it halfway to the lake before I had already spent a tidy sum at Target in Missoula.

Once in Coeur d’Alene, I enjoyed a lovely massage and fabulous pasta meal and with my stomach contentedly full, I hunkered down in my hotel room fora full night’s slumber. Only….the bed was creaky and rock hard, the sheets smelled funny, and there was a mysterious stain on the bedspread that seemed to grow through the night.

Undeterred by a restless night, I donned walking shoes early the next morning for a quick shopping trip before attending conference presentations at the hotel. And in shopping, I wasn’t disappointed.

A great shop named All Things Irish had my favorite imported candy bar, and, more importantly, was home to a cockatiel named Darby. The shop owner let me coo at her and make kissy noises,and though Darby was no Gracie, at least I had a little birdie contact while away from my own baby girl. (Isn’t it funny when we’re away from our pets? The worst part for me is arriving home sans Gracie so that I have to wander around a silent house, absently looking at her empty cage while I count the minutes until I can pick her up. I never realize until she’s gone how much I talk to her. Without her, the conversation is pretty one-sided—though I always win every argument.)

The next morning after I chaired a panel presentation, I had breakfast (French toast encrusted with Frosted Flakes—so right and yet so wrong) with one of the panel presenters. A young woman who was also five months pregnant, Susan, detailed her desperately unhappy work situation. Overloaded with classes, committee work, and advisees, Susan had little time with her toddler and virtually no time with her husband.

And worse, the place where she lived was ugly. She described her house in the middle of a flat cornfield where semi-trucks raced along the highway with reckless abandon.

Every unhappy detail of her university life corresponded to fantastic part of my own. She teaches four courses a semester; I teach three. She lives in the middle of a cornfield; I live with a view of historic Main Hall framed by pine trees. With a toddler at home, she never attends local cultural events; I recently attended a modern dance performance teaming with local kids who LOVED the show.

While I tried to comfort her, I was reminded of my own unhappy situation last year when I lived in Texas. It was a million degrees (and I’m not exaggerating), ugly, chock-a-block stripmalls and pavement, and a work load that would make even Hercules cry like a little girl. What kept me going was a song sung by the blue fish Dorrie in “Finding Nemo”: “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.” Like Mom’s Jiggedee Jog song, Dorrie’s song comforted me (though I wasn’t even close to being home).

So on the drive home from Coeur d’Alene, I thought about these differences, and as I drove closer and closer to Dillon, I got more and more excited. I was excited not just because I knew my bedspread was stain-free and my mattress quite comfy but because I was returning to a place where I am happy.

And when I saw the sign reading “Apex Birch Cr,” I began humming Mom’s Jiggedee Jog song because I knew I was close to home.