Home

Home has never been a specific place for me.  It has been people, dogs, views, feeling-tones, emotions...but never a place.  I'm hugely domestic.  I love being in my own space.  I love making it feel like "me."  But at the core, the only thing that makes anyplace home is the feeling I have when I'm in it.

Home has included, in no particular order:

-a mesa in New Mexico with my dog Jack.  

-an alligator pine tree.  Same scenario.

-A kitchen with bright orange appliances as snow fell and Garrison Keillor talked.

-My car when the music is just right and I have a dog in the way back.

-A yoga studio with a friend, who feels like she's been in my life for so much longer.

-A voice on the phone who knows me better than I know myself.

-A cozy living room where I can curl up on a couch and cry if I need to, laugh if I want to, and all the time know that the people around me love me no matter what.

-My grandmother's kitchen.

-Homemade peach ice cream.

-Humid summer days.

-A tent by running water.

-Muffins and smoothies and Sunday morning conversation on the reservation.

-A forest service cabin in the woods with women I love.

-A back yard where stars shine brighter than city lights.

-My house when I have nothing left on my to-do list.

-The view out my bedroom window when I wake up in the morning.

I am, thankfully, in each of these scenarios.  At least I know I'm always present when I'm home. I think I may need to listen more closely to myself.  I need to listen to the times when I don't want to go "home."  And why.  I have been so grateful this year to finally, really, feel happy to arrive home...in many many spaces.