we’re home again.
to celebrate the sort of up-endedness you feel leaving one time zone full of family and familiarity and heading back to a place that you’re still getting to know (that you may never know), we gardened in the moonlight. i plucked slugs off my yellowing begonias. i weeded the clover from between the toes of my coleus. i tied jute string around the posts of the porch and threaded the morning glory up our brick wall. i listened to voices jutting out of the moonlight: forks clinking against plates at the italian restaurants, the swooop of table umbrellas closing up for the night.
i settled back on my heels, watching the fireflies wink, feeling simultaneously completely at home (at peace) and itchy: itchy to be somewhere, to be out on my colorado plain where my soul seems to unfold and unfold and unfold until i’m bigger than i ever imagined possible.
so, what is home?
is home the place you grew up? where you caught frogs and watched sunsets and broiled in horrific poetry about this or that crush?
is home the place you have your couch, your mattress, your rothko, your books? is home the moment you brought your baby across the threshold and saw his mouth open and close? is home the place where you gather tomatoes and watch for beets to take root?
is home a place i haven’t been yet, somewhere i haven’t had the chance to imagine?
When you find out, be sure to let me know.
I know that windblown, thread-tied and expansive feeling of which you speak. Perhaps we never understand what a home is until we question its existence, at which point we’ve probably left it. Perhaps that will make us appreciate it when we find it again?
home for me is where my children are. where my current ward is. where my husband lives and works. it may change many times…it may never change. i know it’s not where my parents live any more; it was that way for so very long…interesting.