Homing in on Home

Darling Wife and I had a lovely weekend. Our friend from across the northern border came to visit on Saturday, and we spent a relaxing day sitting on the balconies and in the gardens of wineries, sampling the wares, and catching up. The temperature was an absolute perfect 74 degrees Fahrenheit; the sun was warm on the skin; and a gentle breeze kept us cool. Even Fergus had a good time as people everywhere fussed over him in excited tones and rubbed his fur in every direction while he wiggled rapturously around their feet.

Then yesterday, we attended a triumphant celebration of the resurrection of our Lord at the nearby Episcopal church, tidied the house a bit, and took a long walk through the burrowing owl habitat. Again, the weather was near perfect, and the pace was slow and pleasant. The air was perfumed with sage and rosemary from the wild shrubs flowering alongside the adjacent field, and cottontails chased one another long the hedge. California seems like not such a foul word at times like these.

During the afternoon, I phoned my family back in Tennessee. My sister and her family had descended from the frozen depths of Minnesota to spend the holiday there. Everyone was at my brother's house where they were eating and chatting and planning an Easter egg hunt after lunch. That is, everyone was there but me.

But even as I experienced the familiar longing to be home, sharing in the familial camaraderie, I knew that I would not be happy if I were there. It is merely the shadow of a place I called home in a distant time when I was some other person, and I don't belong there anymore. Oh, to be sure I miss it. There are certain things, certain people and places, that will always pull at my heart with all of the power of bittersweet memory. But that's all it is, Memory. There is no living reality there that I am part of, and there hasn't been for a long time.

No, as I've written many times before, the feeling I was revisiting was merely a desire for "home" in a vague and intangible sense. And as much as I might try to trick myself in that telephonic moment that TN is that home, I know better. In quiet moments, when I allow my soul to drift into imagination, it is not the cotton delta, central plateau, or eastern mountains of Tennessee that I journey to. It is the downs and dales of England that call to me the strongest, and their echo resounds along the American north and mid Atlantic coast. Perhaps there I will find harmony.

And if I stay away a bit longer, it may be that the thin air of California will further refine the sound and allow me to home in on it with all the certainty of a migrating swallow, returning to build a nest in the same British riverbank after the long journey home from a winter Mediterranean exile.