Home is where your heart is:  Myth

Well okay, I guess that can be true, but I don’t think it’s totally true.  See, the problem for me is that my heart is in the mountains.  Rivers and lakes, hot long hiking trails, dried out summer fields, dark dark nights and bright stars.  Pine trees, Red woods, old oaks and in the same five minute drive, field upon field of vineyards.  That’s where my heart is – those are the pictures in my minds eye as I close my eyes and think about summertime.  When the wind blows and spring is nearing an end, I picture the county fair and wandering from ride to ride in the freedom of childhood.  What do you see?

In my self-psychoanalysis, as I try to talk myself into being a happily settled resident of this town I’m part of and have been a part of for the last 11 years, I always want to cry.  I feel like a piece of my soul is being ripped out in my attempt to give up my plan to one day move “home”.  The fact that I still call it “home” never even dawned on me until a friend pointed out how funny it was that when I say I’m going “home” I wasn’t talking about the house I live in my with little family – I was talking about the mountains where I grew up. It was a bit of a slap in the face.  While I just laughed it off at the time, it’s stuck with me and I’ve tried to be intentional about the delineation of “home” where I’m from and “home” where I am…..

I feel like I’m rambling.

While watching another friend’s kids while she and her husband had a date night a couple weeks ago, a pillow on her couch caught my eye.  A Bird perched on a house with the words: “Home is where you make it”.

Epiphany.

Home isn’t where your heart is (you have no idea how heard it is to end that sentence with a preposition).  Just like we need to give thanks to BE thankful – we need to Make  a home for our hearts to love –  I need to love the home that my little family is making – no matter it’s location.

The epiphany continued for me today as I blared country music in my suburban neighborhood (yes, I’m that neighbor), and danced around like a crazy woman with my kiddos.  “Make’s me want to take a back road” could just about be the theme song for my life – and maybe that’s okay – Maybe I should just embrace that and be grateful for the fact that my heart is in the mountains and in this place and my kids will grow up with a warped sense of musical taste and a love for dirt and trees in a city which planted a bunch of them.   They’ll always think it’s funny to drive on a gravel road and be worried that I might drive too close to the edge of a road or too fast on the curves, but at least they’ll get a taste of the mountains when we go to where my “home” was, to visit family and friends and all the places I grew up.

I still struggle with this, but I’m trying to make it less of a heart wrenching conversation with myself and more of an acceptance and embracing of this life that’s been allotted.

Happy Thursday friends – hope you are dancing too.