It’s taken my head a couple of years to get used to what my heart and spirit knew the first time I set foot on the land where I now live and have my little studio: I am home. I am staying.
That’s a hard thing, after having led a pretty seriously nomadic lifestyle for about a decade.
I’m realizing this morning that it’s taken me ages to relax into the thought that this house is mine (to clean), this yard is mine (to tend), and this place will care for me as much as I care for it. I believe in the spirit of this 230 acre former summer camp. I believe that it is awake, and that it knows me, has accepted me as one of its own. I love this place deeply, but I’m realizing that the whole of me still hasn’t eased into believing that I won’t have to be gone from here someday. That it won’t be “time to pack up” eventually, like it always used to be.
It’s good to be ready for whatever may or may not come. It’s good to keep your sword sharp and your armor well fitted, because nobody knows what will happen next. But I’m on the verge of giving myself permission to just be here, when I’m here.
There’s the dusting, the dishes, the ants and the poison ivy. There’s also the peace, the cricket song, the bookshelves (far too few, currently) and the green grass. The lake and the mist. The clean air and the starlight.
I ran outside with my camera earlier this morning. From the couch downstairs I could see, past our screened-in patio, a wild hibiscus blossom in the hedge with a dew-laden spiderweb just behind it.
Call me hippie weirdo all you want, but it made my heart stretch and ache to see it. Such an end of summer image, with the lake’s morning mist still dense and mysterious behind it. I did my best to capture what I saw.
This is the kind of moment and image that will help me remember that I have permission to be here, to be happy. It may sound strange to those of you who are very well rooted in your own home spaces, that I need such things. But there it is. There’s a song in this, no doubt. I’ll keep you posted. 🙂