Home

Last evening, actually it wasn’t even dusk yet, I was headed into town musing about the different rhythms of rural living, me a city girl or at least a townie girl all my life now navigating silence and dark skies, dwelling with foxes and deer and rabbits and snakes when a deer ran out in front of my car. We both panicked; my foot flew to the brake while the deer wheeled in place before darting back off to the meadow he’d sprung from. My heart did quite a tap dance as I proceeded down the road wondering which of two of us really belonged here. I confess I was homesick.

We’ve been here exactly one month, long enough to have settled all our things in, hung pictures, met the neighbors and gotten back to work. In some ways life goes on as it always has. Except. I still wake up wondering when this extended vacation will end, the new house is not yet Home. Last night I missed the familiar: the old streets and noise, the neighbors puttering in their yards or chatting on the sidewalk, the friends born of years of late nights, bottomless cups of coffee, laughter and tears. Home can’t be bought off the shelf, it is crafted and honed with love, with time, with sweat and shared hope, like this nest we discovered over the garage. Right outside my window now a baby rabbit nibbles the flowers. My family, where my heart finds Home, sleeps with open windows, in peace. There is abundant beauty at every turn and one day this house, without notice, having reached some unspoken quota of love and laughter, will have indeed become Home.