Home follows me around like a spiral shell on my back; faded spots, chips, and little cracks becoming more charming with time. My family and I have outgrown our shell here in my hometown, which you've heard before here, it's no new story-but hopefully one that will soon have a happy ending. We moved here in 2005 to build a nest for the babes to be born in and ride out the housing crisis near to my parents. Now that baby birds are ready to fly, (and so am I) progressive cities with lots of access to nature are calling.
It can feel exhausting, the search for Home, until I realize that home is not *somewhere*. Home is US. Looking for a place to live, to do daily life, and thrive can sometimes feel like looking for a place for one's heart or family heart to belong. I'm determined that it not feel like a dramatic life or death choice. Choosing what kind of community to raise the pups in often does feel that way, though.
I'm releasing my fear around it…right now. I can trust my heart this time.
Embracing Slow Life at Home
The new year, and all that's pencilled neatly into the calendar each month, still reveals plenty of vast open spaces this time. Space that I long to allow to simply remain unfilled.
For puttering.
For tinkering.
For staying in bed.
For sitting silent in nature while the Kestrels dip and dive over the pasture.
For tickling.
For building fairy houses.
For the sake of open space.
For love of life standing still.
For daydreaming about tiny houses and BARN houses.
For doing nothing when nothing can be done.
For breathing instead of holding.
For spreading out instead of closing in.
For watching the grass grow instead of getting things done.
For letting things unfold instead of soldiering through.
And for reading poems instead of the news.
Coming Home
When we're driving, in the dark,
on the long road
to Provincetown, which lies empty
for miles, when we're weary,
when the buildings
and the scrub pines lose
their familiar look,
I imagine us rising
from the speeding car,
I imagine us seeing
everything from another place — the top
of one of the pale dunes
or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea —
and what we see is the world
that cannot cherish us
but which we cherish,
and what we see is our life
moving like that,
along the dark edges
of everything — the headlights
like lanterns
sweeping the blackness —
believing in a thousand
fragile and unprovable things,
looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping
barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow streets, the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me.
-Mary Oliver