Going Home Again

Didn't someone, somewhere, once say that you can never go home again? Two days ago, I moved the rest of my things from the little house in the woods back to my drafty, yet well loved farmhouse in the village. I brought with me my friends' cat Edmund (or Eduardo when i'm feeling especially Californian) and Chuck the dog. Unfortunately, my flock of chickens was reduced to three hardy, yet nervous hens who have survived being picked off, one by one, by the neighbor's jack russel terrier. A friend is taking what is left of my beautiful flock from their coop in the woods to a dry, haven on a dairy farm twenty miles away. Godspeed little ladies. Godspeed.

The house is pretty empty, save the stacks of boxes littering the open spaces. The windows are dirty, the floors are cold without their rugs and the kitchen seems barren and neglected. The paint on the walls need to be touched up and god help me, where is the vaccuum? The house I left last spring was in transition from being a home filled with a raucous family to a house that would be occupied only parttime. Now, as i sit here in the morning light, drinking coffee strong enough to make my stomach gurgle, I contemplate the need to move forward and arrange this house back into the home and haven that it should be.

I'll clean the windows, inside and out, scraping the paint from it's panes. In the next few weeks, the boxes will be gone and the rooms will lose their echo as furniture is moved in and around. The floors will be covered with worn yet colorful rugs and I'll hang fabric in the windows that will still let in the warm light of the morning sun. The walls will be touched up with paint and if I'm feeling especially ambitious, will take on a whole new hue. I'll find the vaccuum, clean out the dust bunnies and in time, I'll reclaim my home.

Yet, it won't be the home I left all those months ago. This makes me sad...and hopeful. I miss much of my old life, but I've discovered much happiness in this new one. So, it's true. I can't go back to my old home again, but I can create a new one. That is a very good, warm and wonderful thing...