a love letter to home
Home. You are the humid, cedar smell of the Texas Hill Country; you are Orion arching over the tops of live oaks and a sliver of a moon at dawn; you are my dogs.
Home. You are coffee in the morn – good coffee, my way.
Home. You are Rainbow Ranch well water: the crisp, clean, flavorful, cool, clear liquid that restores, refreshes, and hydrates every single cell of me.
Home. You are the connections I make with others. You are the lone wolf me and also the herd animal me. You are interdependence and solitude.
Home. You are car camping in the Subaru, tucked between duffles and window in my purple or blue sleeping bag (or in both), with a book, a thermos for the morning, and a sweeping grassland graced by a windmill and ancient hackberry trees planted by pioneers in a different lifetime.
Home. So elusive for so long. You are the empty place inside of me I tried to fill with so much stuff. Only when I returned to you, deep inside, did I find me. Once I stopped placing the idea of you in others I could finally rest inside your comfort and safety. Now that I have found home, I know how to get back here. Home in me is mystic communion; it is embracing the paradox; it is restful rejuvenation; it is the contemplative, animated, joyful, all-things-are-possible space of me. It is the hurt and healing parts of me that I do not push away. Home is the liminal place of forgiveness.
Like a snail, I create my home from within myself. I secrete the building materials of my shell and I patch the small cracks. If I am crushed, I retreat, rest and garner strength to once again become whole. Right here inside of me.
Home. For so long I wanted to be somewhere else. Now, wherever I am, I can choose to be home. In me. At the same time, this physical place - this ranch with its sounds and scents, with its chores and seasons, with its quiet and green, with its animals and sometimes people – this is the outward manifestation of inner peace and belonging. Now that I am at home in myself, I am also at home in you. Home.