I thought about you the entire time I was away.
I thought of you while traipsing barefoot through the sands of the land I came from.
I thought of you while I listened for my song on the wings of the dusty wind and the dirt roads I call home.
And I thought of you when I returned.
Home.
Is it a person, a place, a thing? Is there only one? Might it also be an adjective? A verb?
According to fellow word nerds, the word home can be traced to the Old English word hām (not the pig) and originally refers to “a village where many souls gather.”
Another more poetic definition refers to it as “an abiding place of affections.”
A feeling.
I embarked upon my 40th circle around the sun this week and everyone keeps saying, “40’s a big one!” I think that might be true. Not so much because of the number, but because for some reason, 40 feels like home.
It’s as if the experiences I’ve carried have finally merged to become part of my inner landscape, rather than accessories to it.
It’s like the people I’ve been, the people I am and the people I will become, have, at last, gathered in acceptance of each other.
It’s like the people I’ve been, the people I am and the people I will become, have, at last, gathered in acceptance of each other.
I’ve realized that all the seeking of passions and paths and purposes was actually only ever a search for who, and what, I already was.
Because how can we possibly return to a place we’ve never even been?
To a person we’ve yet to meet?
Maybe home isn’t necessarily nestled into the hills where my family’s hung its heart for more than 4 generations.
Maybe home has nothing to do with geography at all.
Maybe it’s the smell of my mother on the shirt she just gave me.
Maybe it’s my grandmother’s kitchen.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s right here, right now, rooted in the feeling I carry within.
In which case, may we always be returning home, to ourselves.
Heart in my hand in yours,
