Homecoming

In the middle of May, I flew home.

I went back to Northern California primarily to help my sister after her hip replacement, but the surgery was graciously and fortuitously timed so that I could also dance at the Mad Robin Ball,

celebrate my grand-nephew’s high school graduation with the family,

visit my dearest friends, take the scenic route over Sonoma Mountain at sunset, and indulge in much-missed Pacific Rim sushi.

Coming home to my peeps was EZ PZ. We simply picked up where we’d left off. It was as if we’d never been apart, as if a distance of 2,360 m/3.798 km (as the crow flies) was entirely inconsequential.

Coming home to the places I’d lived and that I’d loved almost all my life, to where I’d gone to school, learned to drive, raised our kids, worked, played, taught, practiced, laughed, married, succeed, failed, celebrated, mourned, and set down roots … coming home to Sonoma was sensory, visceral, and complex. As I drank in the sights, bathed in the sounds, basked in the feel of the dry wind on my face, savored the flavors I hadn’t tasted in too long, and inhaled the oh-so familiar essences of a Nor-Cal summer, I was filled with a sense of belonging.

Three weeks later, I flew home.

It was not an easy homecoming.

For me, home is where the heart lies, so it was rather poor timing that my husband – heart of my heart – flew off to a family reunion in North Carolina mere hours after I flew in from California. Still, I was far from averse to the idea of a week alone to recharge, relax, maybe get some writing done …

Declining to play the role of Home, Sweet Home, from the minute I walked in the door (about 1:30am local time on Sunday 7 June) through last night (Midsummer’s Eve), the house has been throwing me an unending series of can’t-ignore-them curve-balls ranging from annoyances to incipient disasters. Instead of recuperating, catching up on three weeks away, and covering normal daily-living bases, I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to dry out the mini-flood in the carpeted basement, get the busted AC fixed (during a heat wave), run down the true source of the AC issue (an electrical mishap), get the overgrown lawn mowed (should happen tomorrow (fingers crossed); the City of Webster has already issued us a warning) –

Clearly, our creaky old domicile has made no attempt to seduce me into feeling at home upon my return. And yet, I can’t deny the peace my daughter’s and yerno’s warm welcome brought me or my delight in the shimmering vastness of the lake, the deep jewel-blue of the bay, the lush woods, the flowering meadows, the resounding bird-sung canzonets, and the wild wind in the towering trees.

It’s Midsummer’s Day, my second Midsummer in Western New York. I am home, where I belong … though I belong to another home entirely.

A week ago, I wrote to the author of this poem for permission to reprint it here. I never heard back. Far be it for me to knowingly violate a copyright. Here’s the link: COMING HOME II

JK. Naturally, as soon as I published this post, I received a reply from the office of Tara Mohr, the poem’s author. Click on her name to visit her website. And here’s the poem in full:

Coming Home II

 

The warmth of the hearth in my chest
and the breath of warm enoughness
and something like love in my throat,
a dense goodness covering —

all this: because I am home.

Because I fought the fight,
as difficult as Odysseus’ journey.
I slayed dragons, and scaled steep peaks,
laid down in a bed with fear,
and walked through the woods in the night.
A thousand trials to get home.

Yet the journey was also this:
Dorothy clicking her heels three times,
and being instantly transported there,
the moment she called for it.
Home coming like rain, like grace—
without struggle or trial or mud.

The long road and the non-road home:
perhaps we are always walking both, like train tracks.

Home on the other side of the door.
It’s as simple as knocking and as far as a thousand miles to get there.

In that home place, I can see:
nothing was ever broken.
Warmth savors up from our chests like a hearth
and love is in our throats, lunging outward,
and the world becomes a basket of gifts,
and we sit in it, and look around,
and tears rise, at the intensity of it.

– Tara Mohr

May your Midsummer-tide be utterly free of pesky house-maintenance issues (as I will, so mote it be …) and filled to overflowing with the blessings of the season.