all sickness is homesickness

all sickness is homesickness, all roads lead back on a breadcrumb trail that the crows and sparrows have eaten. There is no clue, no feather, no cairn of stones set along the roadside marking the path because the path has been erased, your footsteps blown into oblivion by the wind whose job it is to see you never turn back.

but you do, even for a moment, just for a glimpse you know will pierce you because you can’t return…to the sea you swam in as a child, to visit the headstone marker where your father is buried, to watch the moon rise between the gap in the curve of the mountains, a jewel between the round breasts of a nursing mother, to pour water on the small garden you made with cuttings from a friend now long dead. The hummingbirds. The crows that came for the peanuts you scattered, nattering among themselves, sunsets like melting sherbet, and the coyotes, their mournful  cry at night so close to the house you could see their yellow eyes shine in the dark.

there is so much still packed away in storage that survived two weeks on the ocean in a waterproof container…the candle holder I bought when Kimmie and I were on a road trip, stoned, laughing, attracting men like speeding tickets.

the porcelain vase from Maui I bought 38 years ago when I was pregnant, the one with the flowering plum branch that holds cut roses with a graceful open palm.

my favorite coffee cup, a gift from a hospice patient, and the scarf she gave me I promised to take traveling with me, but now I don’t want to travel. I want to sit in my own rocking chair, also in storage, and rock to James Taylor singing close your eyes you can close your eyes and it’s alright and so I do and for one moment it is ok that I’m here in a strange land sitting on a strange chair, my dresses in storage still squished in my suitcase.

so. no multiplex movie theaters. no Trader Joe’s. no dry cleaners. no layer upon layer of convenience. no everything everywhere all the time.

but listen. I can’t have it all, so here’s what I do have: the first bud on the first sweet pea of spring. storm clouds gathering, grey white black a watercolor bleeding a message across the sky…rain coming, rain is almost here.

a Sunday afternoon road trip with my still handsome husband behind the wheel and it’s oh so sunny this Sunday and we drive to Lynch’s Creek and find the secret swimming hole by the old one-room school house with a posted sign saying camping is allowed and there’s just grass, no marked spots like in America, and an old milk jug for donations and the swimming hole is ten feet deep, clean and cool, and my husband is still strong and alive.

my daughter and son-in-law who have welcomed us, who say we will care for you when you need help, we will look after you and love you until the end. who feed us from the abundance of their organic farm and are so pleased that we grow stronger in body and soul. their love freely given, generous, my daughter saying I love you, I’m so glad you’re here.

the wild pleasure of being with our eighteen month old granddaughter, who likes to be in the wheelbarrow as we tour her parent’s farm, expansive in her joy, her blooming smile when she sees me, her toothy grin, picking parsley that she tastes and tastes and then gives to me, a gummed up gift. who are you I wonder, you who were the seed inside my grandmother, my mother, the seed inside me and then my daughter. Are you the phoenix rising, letting dirt shower down on us, blessing us with your promise to keep the story alive, to write the new narrative of how stories stand up and move on their own, seeking yet another home.

 I am going to buy a small tree and plant it. I have mostly been gardening in large pots for the past thirteen years and now I am daring to plant, watch a seed sprout, bud, flower, bloom, go through its cycles, fall back to earth, lie fallow and wait, wait for the next cycle because I long for a place of peace and sanctuary where there’s soup on the stove coffee in the pot and pie in the oven, where we can recover from the trauma of our collective bad dreams, learn how to comfort the crying one inside, make a warm spot in the bed and invite her in, whisper all will be well, all will be well, sink into a place that feels like a mother’s arms, comfort so deep it’s a warm bath scented candles hot tea massage oil Joni over the speakers perfumed soap fluffy towels slippers and bathrobe. where we extend kindness because that is the coin of the realm we have to offer in this green new land.

I am going to make this home no matter where I am, no matter whose chair I sit in, or whose coffee cup I drink from, because holy hell if this isn’t home, where I am standing right now in this moment, then I am truly lost and no bread crumb trail can ever lead me anywhere else but back to myself. here.

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Read more stories like this in my book The Ripening: Essays on Love, Loss, Marriage and Aging available on Amazon.