Weathering

Home is a word that has come to mean more than a physical location or building to me. It's a feeling that I am where I belong. Where I can become all that I'm meant to become. I've never felt it where I've lived but I get the sense of it when I'm near the water. The Great Lakes mesmerize me. The oceans, though farther away, are magnetic pulls. When I look out over them, I feel like I imagine a person fully in her element must feel. 

That's home. 

I've been reading poetry before bed each night this week and stumbled across this one by Fleur Adcock a few nights ago. It's been on my mind since and each time I read it (always aloud, as poems are meant to be read), I cry. 

This, too, is how I imagine I'll feel when I'm finally home. 

WEATHERING

My face catches the wind

from the snow line

and flushes with a flush

that will never wholly settle.

Well, that was a metropolitan vanity,

wanting to look young forever, to pass.

I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty

and only pretty enough to be seen

with a man who wanted to be seen

wth a passable woman.

But now that I am in love

with a place that doesn't care

how I look and if I am happy, 

happy is how I look and that's all.

My hair will grow grey in any case,

my nails chip and flake,

my waist thicken, and the years

work all their usual changes.

If my face is to be weather beaten as well,

it's little enough lost

for a year among the lakes and vales

where simply to look out my window

at the high pass

makes me indifferent to mirrors

and to what my soul may wear

over its new complexion.

And, I realize, if you're not me (which you aren't), you probably read that and thought, "What? Home? What?" and that's okay. There's something magical in the lines of poetry in that you never know on whose jagged edges of soul they'll snag. 

This one just happens to snag on mine.

Indulge Me

Where is the one place in the world you would love to visit, if money, time, civil unrest or spiders as big as dinner plates weren't an issue?

Where is one place you have visited (or lived) that was so unappealing you would have to be paid a significant sum to revisit?

Which country or region of the country (tell us your country, if not the U.S.) have you found the most friendly, warm and welcoming people? 

If you had to spend the rest of your life in only one location anywhere in the world, where would it be? Your family, friends, employers, favorite hair stylist, etc. could move along with you, if that makes it easier. 

Your responses are greatly anticipated and appreciated.  :) 

Feeling At Home

My 'regular' at the coffee shop: cinnamon-orange decaf teaI've spent part of every weekend since early November in the neighborhood I'm considering moving to. I've been feeling my way around, driving up and down streets, looking at houses, checking out the locals, walking through the parks. You might say I've been trying out the town to see if it fits and how comfortable it is. The place is winning me over in a big way. 

The owners and managers of the shops I've been in have introduced themselves to me and been so friendly, every time I go to the coffee shop someone engages me in conversation and I even went so far as to join a writers' group that meets at the local independent bookstore.  

I'm sort of moving in without the hassle of cardboard boxes and packing tape. 

Last weekend, I spent the entire afternoon there, enjoying the Christmas Walk in the downtown area. Most of the shops were open, which was a treat because they aren't normally open on Sundays. Everyone was offering specials and sales and free hot drinks and there were singers serenading everyone with Christmas carols on the sidewalk. A horse-drawn trolley took children to see Santa and Mrs. Claus and then everyone gathered at the park to hear Christmas carols by the church choir and watch Santa light the 30' pine in the center of the plaza. And even though it was an all-day event sponsored and primarily attended by the residents of the community, I was welcomed and taken in as though I belonged. It is so unlike the town I live in now, it's hard to describe. I've never felt quite so at home in a place so unfamiliar. It's amazing.

BeforeAfter

TMI

I do not know what types of vehicles my neighbors drive. Why this finally occurred to me after living here thirteen years or why I find it so absurd, I do not know. But it has and I do and I am not sure what it means.

I grew up in a tiny town, not much bigger than the neighborhood I live in now. Times being what they were then, I was allowed to ride my bicycle the entire length and width of the village limits alone. I used to ride by all the houses in town and I knew who was home by which vehicles I saw parked in the driveway. For the neighbors within a block or two, I knew when they should be home and always wondered where they were when their vehicle was not parked outside at the usual time. 

Vehicles were a rather significant source of information in a small town. We knew someone had visitors when we did not recognize the vehicles parked in the driveway. We knew who made it to church that week, who was hanging out at the gas station, and who showed up to the school basketball games, just by driving by and looking at the vehicles in the parking lots. We knew who attended the volunteer firemen meeting, who was a Mason, and who played softball the night before without a newspaper account or hearing about it at the post office. The vehicles told us everything. They may have told us too much.

I do not know what my neighbors drive. I have quiet neighbors, for the most part, and I know a few of them by sight. I have no idea where any of them work, what time they should be home or whether they play softball. If any of them needed a lift to the supermarket or to borrow a ladder, I would gladly oblige but I can limit my relationship to helping when asked and not investing in it the rest of the time. It is a different way of living but I like it.

I will ponder whether or not I should on another day.

I No Longer See It

From the time I was very young, I have always lived in two worlds, the one here with the rest of you and the one I had built inside my head. The world inside changed over the years, as I grew and matured and experienced new things, but one thing was constant. There was always a hallway with a door at the end and I would sneak down that hallway from time to time and kneel at that door to peek through the keyhole. What I saw inside was my future.

I have always had a vision of my future, I suppose because I have always had goals and dreams and some idea of the direction I wanted to take. I do not remember what was behind that door when I was very young, probably something to do with living amongst hundreds of kittens and ponies or something. From my teenaged years, behind that door was a life in the city. If you could squeeze in my mind with me, I would give you a tour of my apartment with the exposed brick walls and the loft bedroom and the wide plank floors, the color of dark golden honey. It is as clear to me as the room I am sitting in. 

In my thirties, that apartment morphed into a stone cottage on a mountain, overlooking a lake. Again, every detail of that home is imprinted on my mind, from the butterscotch leather comfy chair in the corner of the cozy living room to the little purple wildflowers growing by the door and the towering evergreen pines all around. I could see myself at a large wooden desk in the den, drinking tea, watching the sunrise, and writing novels.

It was all so clear.

This weekend I stole down that hallway in my mind to take a peek through the keyhole in that door again. I looked but I could not see anything. I pulled back, cleaned my glasses and tried again. I squinted. There was nothing to see.

I have been analyzing that now for hours on end. What does it mean? Where did my future go? If I try really hard, the farthest I can see into the future is maybe... Thursday. Why? What happened?

Is it because I have not one goal now but many? Is it because each dream I hold for myself is independent yet intertwined with the others so that any of them could come true on their own or together as one and that leaves my future just too unpredictable? 

I do not know. 

I refuse to believe that because I did not see anything that means there is nothing there. Instead, I want to believe that there is a dark, thick, velvet curtain hanging over the inside of the door obstructing my view. If I were to kneel at the door again and put my ear, rather than my eye, to the keyhole, maybe I would hear movement, construction noises perhaps, meaning my future is being built even as I think about it.

But I did not put my ear to the door and listen. Instead I turned away from the door and left. I guess I am not yet ready to know.