Friday, July 20, 2012

home again...


We extended our trip a few more weeks and spent two lovely months in our little hometown. Two months of honeysuckle, fireflies and lazy days. Two months that started with snow flurries and ended with blackberries that were almost ripe. All of it with mountains in the background that must be magnetic because the way that they pull me.

That seemed to be just long enough for me to forget why the teen version of myself always wanted to leave, and also just long enough not to remember that we had to come back at all. But back we are and oh, what an adjustment! It feels like moving here all over again. Making this house and town our home is a process and I let myself jump out of that process while we were away. And I've been quite reluctant, since we've been back, to jump in again.

It would be too easy right now to make a list of all the reasons I'm having a hard time feeling at home here. Too easy to make comparisons to our sleepy hometown (a place my husband and I both agree will never be home again anyway, as lovely as it is to go back and visit). Too easy to make comparisons to the cities we've lived in and fell in love with. So I won't.

I will think of the next project, envision the garden that seems so reluctant to go in, and fall back into the routines of the everyday. It's those routines, I think, that make a place "home" and maybe that's at the heart of this. Being away was wonderful- but disruptive. Maybe we just need to be back here for a while and move through our days. For me, that means giving over to the routines with less comparisons and scrutiny. I need to give this place a chance.

So I'll take one more look back, at the hills and the honeysuckle, and with a deep breath, I'll be here...at home.