Home is Where....
For some reason, the old platitude: HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS, hit me in the head (the heart?) when my husband said..."I'm at home..."
"Home?" I said, taken back by the term, as we had been moving around for economic reasons, and now it was emotional reasons...which caused me some disorientation about my own direction and aspirations...
"Yeah, up here in Idyllwild..." he said.
My heart did not feel home when I was there, curiously. In fact, my heart sunk instead. I felt Heart-Sick, realizing how very different he and I had become...wondering why my husband did not feel that same estrangement....and then, I realized that for him, it was home. For me, it was the reality of the meaning of ...HOME.
I had no desire to make my way back to that place in the mountains, with potential snow, and also with the uncomfortable trek to the cabin up the steep hilly, dirt & mud-filled driveway...sounds silly. But was that really the reason?
Twenty-five years ago, when we were first married, I could have thought of this cold, wooly place as romantic and certainly, my home. What happened? Twenty-five years of memories, experiences, incidences, changes, and reality....and now I question: "Where is HOME?"
Funny, every time I say the word, I remember E.T, the movie about the alien who had accidentally been left on earth, and was displaced by the accident.
"E.T. phone home..." he kept saying throughout the movie, until he finally was able to signal his kind, and they came back for him. And though he loved his friend, he knew he could not stay, as it was not his HOME, and he was dying, literally, to go HOME.
Yes, it was a cute story, very entertaining, like many of Stephen Spielberg's movies are. And depending on the viewer, it could be funny in a literal sense, or pensive in a metaphoric way. I chose the latter, which was for me, more to the point.
The story of E.T. was a tear jerker, and poignant to me, because E.T. did not feel he was where he belonged, and this was his sense of loss in this place...THIS is what I am contemplating today: Where is HOME? How do I phone home, and find my way back?
I believe today that I will be discovering where HOME really is, although I am sure the word itself is abstract, and not concrete...HOME is within, and where one's heart truly is, IS WITHIN. But where one goes, what one does, how one manages to support one's self, or when one indicates a major change, home is not far away...the signal has been heard...
If we are living our own lives in integrity, and we choose to live within ourselves authentically, then we can sense find our way, and retrive the balance E.T. lacked. Perhaps it was inevitable that we came to that place incidentally. The way my husband is also now coming to terms with his HOME, in his mountainous habitat...is a sadness that cannot be avoided: he is there, and I am not...
There is this pain in me that says, our homes are in different places, and I am not talking about locations, only the locations that we desire separately, in our hearts. Feeling lost, is an indication that one has not found one's home. But feeling pulled is an indication that one must go NOW or one will be no longer...E.T. phone home...
Today, I go to seek my HOME. That can be taken literally, but more importantly it's meant to be taken figuratively, because I lost my balance a very long time ago, when I was dropped off accidentally into a life I did not choose, and left to find my way back.
I need to regain my balance in this world, and hear the message that makes those words real to me: "Home is where the heart is." Wish me luck as I go on my DISCOVERY journey...
Lydia Nolan,
Author/Writer/Alien-in-Travel
"Home?" I said, taken back by the term, as we had been moving around for economic reasons, and now it was emotional reasons...which caused me some disorientation about my own direction and aspirations...
"Yeah, up here in Idyllwild..." he said.
My heart did not feel home when I was there, curiously. In fact, my heart sunk instead. I felt Heart-Sick, realizing how very different he and I had become...wondering why my husband did not feel that same estrangement....and then, I realized that for him, it was home. For me, it was the reality of the meaning of ...HOME.
I had no desire to make my way back to that place in the mountains, with potential snow, and also with the uncomfortable trek to the cabin up the steep hilly, dirt & mud-filled driveway...sounds silly. But was that really the reason?
Twenty-five years ago, when we were first married, I could have thought of this cold, wooly place as romantic and certainly, my home. What happened? Twenty-five years of memories, experiences, incidences, changes, and reality....and now I question: "Where is HOME?"
Funny, every time I say the word, I remember E.T, the movie about the alien who had accidentally been left on earth, and was displaced by the accident.
"E.T. phone home..." he kept saying throughout the movie, until he finally was able to signal his kind, and they came back for him. And though he loved his friend, he knew he could not stay, as it was not his HOME, and he was dying, literally, to go HOME.
Yes, it was a cute story, very entertaining, like many of Stephen Spielberg's movies are. And depending on the viewer, it could be funny in a literal sense, or pensive in a metaphoric way. I chose the latter, which was for me, more to the point.
The story of E.T. was a tear jerker, and poignant to me, because E.T. did not feel he was where he belonged, and this was his sense of loss in this place...THIS is what I am contemplating today: Where is HOME? How do I phone home, and find my way back?
I believe today that I will be discovering where HOME really is, although I am sure the word itself is abstract, and not concrete...HOME is within, and where one's heart truly is, IS WITHIN. But where one goes, what one does, how one manages to support one's self, or when one indicates a major change, home is not far away...the signal has been heard...
If we are living our own lives in integrity, and we choose to live within ourselves authentically, then we can sense find our way, and retrive the balance E.T. lacked. Perhaps it was inevitable that we came to that place incidentally. The way my husband is also now coming to terms with his HOME, in his mountainous habitat...is a sadness that cannot be avoided: he is there, and I am not...
There is this pain in me that says, our homes are in different places, and I am not talking about locations, only the locations that we desire separately, in our hearts. Feeling lost, is an indication that one has not found one's home. But feeling pulled is an indication that one must go NOW or one will be no longer...E.T. phone home...
Today, I go to seek my HOME. That can be taken literally, but more importantly it's meant to be taken figuratively, because I lost my balance a very long time ago, when I was dropped off accidentally into a life I did not choose, and left to find my way back.
I need to regain my balance in this world, and hear the message that makes those words real to me: "Home is where the heart is." Wish me luck as I go on my DISCOVERY journey...
Lydia Nolan,
Author/Writer/Alien-in-Travel
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