I sometimes envy people who have a family home to return to, a place where they grew up, where their parents or even their grandparents lived.

The closest thing I have is the farmhouse where my mother grew up. My grandparents lived there until they died, and my mother's older brother, Andy, and his wife, Bea, live there still, despite everyone's insistence that, at 90, Andy might want to think about moving to a place with fewer stairs, a little bit closer to town.

"I've lived here almost all my life!" Andy says. "Why should I move now?"

People could say, "Well, because you're 90 years old, and you broke your leg a year ago and it's a big old house for a couple of people who are no longer young."

But most people don't bother to say that because it wouldn't change Andy's mind. He likes sitting in the kitchen. He can watch the birds on the feeders that Bea keeps stocked with seeds and look out on the fields that used to be filled with peas or soybeans but are now horse pasture. He can see where the barn used to be before he tore it down rather than have it collapse on itself. He's got things the way he likes them, and he doesn't see the point in upsetting the applecart -- that's my guess.

Mother moved to the farmhouse when she was young. She had 10 siblings, and that was a lot of kids to keep track of. This is why I cannot really blame my grandparents for failing to update the youngest three on the exact date of the move.

The school bus dropped them off at their house, but everyone was gone. They didn't know what to do. My mother was the oldest of the three, and they sat together on a roll of linoleum until someone came and brought them to the new farmhouse. That was a very long time ago, and my uncle Andy has been there ever since.

The home I grew up in was sold long ago. When I married Peter, I sold my house, and we lived together in his home. We sold Peter's place when we moved to the city. Then we started coming to Mexico. Last night, I realized my idea of home was, once again, changing.

This little apartment that we do not own -- where we have no more than two matching plates and bowls -- this place feels more and more like coming home.

Jorge, who owns the hotel we stay in, was raised here with even more siblings than my mother had. There were 13 of them, and they all grew up in the home that occupied this space that Jorge has converted into eight apartments. Jorge lives here still, in a small apartment in the front, always available if a guest arrives late or loses a key or has any of the problems hotel guests are prone to.

There is a lot about this hotel that does not seem like a proper business establishment. There is a lot of unnecessary kindness and art and laughter. I think it is because this is -- and will remain -- Jorge's home. Sitting at the front desk in the afternoons, Jorge is always delighted to see everyone, delighted to share his home.

I don't think it has to make sense any more than Andy's choice to remain in the farmhouse kitchen. Home is where you find it. Home is what you know. Home is where you feel at ease. That makes sense to me.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon's memoir is called "Blue Yarn." Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS

I was walking down an old street in an old part of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Brightly colored wooden doors line the streets. There is no indication from the outside what might be within. It could be a courtyard filled with flowers and a fountain, or a small business, or somebody’s kitchen. It is a mystery what is behind these doors, and so, when one is open, naturally I look inside.

Last week, a door was open, and I saw a few items of clothing for sale, so I stepped inside. That’s when I met Piccolina.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“That is Piccolina,” a woman at a sewing machine answered in Spanish.

Piccolina was a fat little puppy with blue eyes and black-and-white spots. She was delighted to meet me, and I was delighted to meet the woman with the sewing machine because I had a square tablecloth that I wanted to be round. I had thought of bringing it back home with me to the States to do the alteration, but that seemed like a lot of heavy fabric to haul back-and-forth when, the odds were, I would run into someone like Piccolina’s mother. And now I had.

I explained my tablecloth situation as best I could, and it was clear from the woman’s nodding and pantomimed gestures that she understood the project. I agreed to bring it the next day.

“And then I get to see Piccolina!” I thought.

The next day I called, “Where is Piccolina?!” and the little dog came running and the woman, whose name was Marta, also came running. I handed off my tablecloth, and we agreed on a price that seemed like far too little for the work involved.

A few days passed, and I came back. The floors had just been mopped, and Piccolina was not being allowed on the floors until they were dry. She was being held by a young relative of Marta’s and this made her unhappy, which she indicated by chomping down on my finger when I went to greet her.

“Oh, no! Piccolina!” Marta said. She didn’t think Piccolina should be biting the customers, but they were just puppy bites, and the customer had been asking for it.

The tablecloth was not finished because Marta was proposing something more complicated -- and prettier -- than I had envisioned.

“Fine!” I said, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what she was saying. I promised to return in a few days.

“And then I get to see Piccolina again!” I thought.

The next time I arrived, the tablecloth was finished, with a fringe all around the edge that transitioned from one color to another, with a mixture of the two colors in between. It had taken a lot of thread-pulling and time, and I paid Marta more than she had asked for and I said goodbye to Piccolina.

But not for good. Yesterday I stopped by, even though I had no business with Marta.

“Piccolina, where are you?” I called, and she was easy to find because she was waiting at the doggy gate that Marta had installed.

“Piccolina has a gate!” I said.

“Piccolina has been running onto the street!” Marta tut-tutted.

The street is quiet and cobblestone, so I don’t think Piccolina was in much danger, but I also imagine Marta got tired of running outside to retrieve her.

“You are a naughty little dog!” I informed Piccolina, and Marta agreed.

You can tell friends things like this, and we are all friends now -- Marta and me and Piccolina.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called “Blue Yarn.” Learn more: CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS

They call the impossibly complicated screen I am looking at a "dashboard," which I do not find reassuring at all. It would be nice not to associate my ignorance of technology with crashing some out-of-control machine into a ravine, although, as I think about it, that is very much how it feels.

Learning new technology is a bear. I don't care what they say.

I understand the need to play with it, get familiar with the functions and learn in a less-than-linear fashion. But less-than-straightforward learning often leads me to travel in circles -- I do the same thing again and again, and discover that I have learned nothing at all.

This is what I have been doing of late.

The goal is simple: I'm going back to some of "The Postscripts" from early on and making videos of them to post on my website and YouTube channel. I thought it would be a fun way for new readers to enjoy old columns. But I had to wade through a forest of fear and insecurities first -- and I'm not home yet.

First, there are the required hours of staring at my face on the screen.

I was a stage actor before I started writing, where we take lots of photos but do not film the work. The result is that I know more or less how to position my face when a camera is in the vicinity to keep from looking completely ridiculous.

Video is different. My face is in constant motion on video. I stop the video midframe and see that I have an expression on my face that I did not know I was capable of making. It is never flattering. It is always grotesque.

"Do other people move their faces that much?" I wonder. I don't think so. This is fear No. 1: having an abnormally mobile face.

Fear No. 2 is what to do with all this captured footage of my grotesque face contortions. Now we're back at the "dashboard," aptly named as I prepare for a crash landing.

The tutorials drone on and on about how to achieve an effect I would never dream of trying and merrily speed over the section where they explain, "This is how you can actually see what you are working on!" That would be nice to know.

There are dials and buttons and functions and reams of information about this video, less than five minutes long. There are special effects and filters I will never use, editing tricks I will never need and multilayering track capabilities that are totally superfluous to what I am doing. And, on every control, there is a long list of measurements I am supposed to understand to achieve the desired result. I suddenly feel that I am about two years old.

There is a story told about me when I was two. I got up on the bathroom scale and declared, "I'm going to see how tall I am. Oh!" I announced confidently, "Two degrees!"

I'm not sure I ever got over the feeling that measurements are not intuitive in the least.

But I am back at it today. The dashboard is all in shades of black and gray. I'm sure this is to make it look more intimidating and serious. We couldn't have a candy-colored dashboard with little animated mascots helping me along the way.

By the end of yesterday, I had done what a typical video editor would accomplish in approximately 15 seconds. It felt like a tremendous accomplishment.

I think I progressed by at least two degrees.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon's memoir is called "Blue Yarn." Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION FOR UFS