homesickness

Things have been a little cranky around here lately.

that's a way of saying that I've been a little cranky, without actually assigning any guilt.

you could say that I am ready to go home. To have a home of our own. Something kind of brownish green, tucked into some trees, surrounded by loamy needles and cones and diamonds of rain. Something wooden and warm and garlicky with a chalkboard and soft floor rugs. Windowsills cluttered with spice jars and colored glass that we found on a walk, with dry goods stacked and fruit hung, pots and pans dangling like party decorations, with homemade smells fogging up the window glass every day.

Something might have a corner full of instruments - the toy piano, tambourine, the violin, empty popcorn tins and loose seed pods for shaking. A bowl full of sticks for drumming on things, not people and not animals. Another corner with a cat for company, a table of books, a teapot ready. Drawers full of yarn and fabric scraps, sewing needles for big fingers and little. A typewriter and sheafs of paper embroidered with letters, spelling out simple moments in time, the ones perfumed by the magic of life. Somewhere, a bed which is really a boat set adrift in the mysterious sea fog, fortified with a shelf of books, a basket of knitting, a bell, and a journal for recording the impossible things in between.

I hope that all this daydreaming I do in the offbeats, the bits of time when the diaper is dry and that warm, tiny body is settled into my lap or deeply focused on some private thoughts of her own, I hope that it is serious work, that the glimpses I get of a rain spattered window reflecting a cozy and flickering fire, the girl busy with her games on the floor, the quiet unshattered peace of a place all our own, I hope that it is being dreamed into existence, that each glimpse erects another beam in a reality that I will someday soon meet, and recognize. We will wipe our boots and leave them by the front door, on the porch, and hang up our coats and scarves before racing to build a fire and dry off, now that we are home. I hope that this place already exists with us in it, and all that's left is to follow the steps leading up to it, like a scavenger hunt with the inevitable conclusion of us, happy in the place we were always meant to inhabit, the place which for so long has inhabited all my waking dreams.