Home Volume 4

I wanna go home but not yet

“Where is home?” they inquire again

I never know how to answer really...

It’s where the stairs squeak as I try to tip toe down for a drink of water

Long after the others are asleep

Where we run between houses outside in our socks even as our mother’s words echo in our ears that we shouldn’t

We’re grown-ups after all.

Where the sound of tires on a bumpy driveway, interrupted by a clank of the drain on the road

Seems familiar now.

Where a precious little girl’s stories about her simple day lick the wounds of the pain of my own

Where a tiny white dog shuffles to the door with shrill barks the same time every afternoon

It’s the house where the walnuts clunk against sky lights every fall

Where the shower doesn’t drain properly and the coffee machines are constantly grinding

Serving visitors sauntering in and out, often without agenda

And it’s where my people dwell.

The ones who ask hard questions that used to make me shrink away

These ones who push me to take risks

To live in the deep.

Who cast out darkness wherever they go and pray for things as small as a paper cut

“That place changed you” they say

And I pray this home has changed me

Made me slower, softer.

I pray it has opened my eyes to a world east of me

I pray it hasn’t made me cold or aloof

But has grounded me deeper

down into this muddy earth.

Shown me how to speak with intention and heart

To befriend deeply without urgency the ones I find myself caring for

To spend my time going deep and heavy

giving up the wide and the thin.

I pray it’s taught me who I am

In a way that no way that relates to my physical appearance

Or ability to be helpful

Or productive

Or elegant with words.

I pray it’s taught me to be quiet.

I pray it’s opened me up, cracked open these dry and stale places of worldviews I chose passively

I pray my mind never forgets this war we’re a part of

The war I’ve seen in this home

I’ll always be foreign

But I’ve grown a tiny set of flimsy wings

Budding out from under the strong set I’ve flown with in years past

They’re fragile and weak but they’re there

And now I can fly a bit further

And may I be proud of this new dimension of myself

What this home has pulled out of me.

Though it feels graceless at the moment-

I’m unsure of how to use these new wings in an old place...

But I will learn there is home there too

And squeaky doors

And driveways that will soon become familiar

I’m not in a hurry for home

xx

M

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