I have always been a wanderer, a nomad. Although I have
settled in one place or another for relatively long stretches of time, my heart
has always ached to wander. Perhaps this is because I have never really felt at
home in the various places I have lived: in between the rock gorges of Ithaca
New York, at the precipice of the main line and White Anglo Saxon Protestant
America, in our nation’s capital for more than a decade. Perhaps it is the ever addictive pull of perspective.
But now I do, have a home. This farm, its hills, that
magical breeze, the forest of trees, the gravel driveway underneath my feet,
the long winters and the preciously short summers, the Technicolor dream coat of
leaves that masks our perimeter in the fall, the sheets of rain that pour
heavily on the tin roof, my horses as they run and chew and gnaw on the wooden
fence boards, my dogs as they sleep and awake me each day just a little too
early for my comfort. I call it home.
As much as I had always yearned to see Ethiopia, and, in
fact, every single one of Africa’s 54 countries, on this last trip abroad, what
gave me solace was home. The world is chaotic and its problems are infinite and
of overwhelming magnitude. I now, after my 35 years here, finally see the value
of home.
Life, of course, is showing me the danger of finding a home.
This year has been unpredictable at best. Impermanence is shining its blinding
light. The bedrock of my existence has been pulled from underneath me, first
with the death of my mother and then with the dissolution of my marriage.
It’s no one’s fault but my own and the way fate has willed
it, if fault can be declared at all.
As life would have it, my home may now
cease to be. It is dangerous, I think, to find our home in physical sense. I
would imagine that the most happy of us all have that sense of home right there
inside. They can find it there, where they live, or 10,000 miles away, on the
other side of the world. It isn’t affected by a difference in smell, taste, and
a sense of security. It is owning what is you.
In my wanderlust, I hope I can eventually travel to, grab,
wrap myself around, and never let go of that elusive place I can call home.
