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It has been a long long time since I have posted here, and there are many reasons for that. After two years away, I have moved back to Texas, but that is not all that has happened in the past year. I will post about the other changes on a different day. There has been a lot of sadness but today I am feeling good about life and it's infinite possibilities, so today I just want to dwell on pleasant things.

We made the decision to come back to Texas at the beginning of last summer, and started looking, trying to determine where we should settle. We eliminated places that were unfamiliar to us, because the truth is, we were eager to get back to the familiar -- doctors we know, dentists we never quit, friends and family we missed. Grocery stores. Movie theaters. Libraries. All the things we gave up to embark on the high-altitude, mountain life of the past two years. Fact is, we just missed home.

I had a good friend say to me: "You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can't take Texas out of the girl." That kind of irked me when she said it, because it's too simplistic. Home is more than a place, it's a feeling of belonging, of familiar comforts, of being right with the world. Home is where you go to understand who you are.

One definition I found for the word home says "the place in which one's domestic affections are centered." I like that definition best. I never felt those domestic affections for the place in the mountains. I enjoyed many aspects of life there, the neighbors, the wildlife, the clean air, and the uniqueness of the place. But the winters are far too long for me. I didn't mind the cold, but the length of the season was just too much for a person with a slightly green thumb and a desire to plant things for beauty and consumption. The conveniences of a bigger city were too distant to take advantage of often enough, and the economic opportunities were too few as well.

So we are back. And we have bought an old "homey" place that I think will indeed become the object of our "domestic affections." Nothing is perfect, and the weather here -- especially in the summer -- will no doubt become a burden. But I like knowing where I am going, where to find things I need, the names of the plants, trees, and flowers, as well as how to go about growing them. I like being close enough to my grandson to see him more than three times a year, and I like having my extended family nearby, too. I like the food here, places to eat and what's best on the menus. I like not needing a map to get from point A to point B. I like feeling like I am home.

Home Sweet Home

What is it about home that feels so wonderful? I'm just back from a long week, by that I mean more than 7 days, away from home, and the places I went were by far mostly much more beautiful and interesting than this place where I live. Still, last night there was just this huge "ah" as I stepped into the mud room and turned on the lights. This is where I can relax, take a nap, hug my kitty, make a mess or clean one up, whatever suits my fancy.

Coming up the driveway, the most obvious thing was how high the grass had grown. We had rain. Yea! Need so much more, but grateful for what fell. My SO said, "I'm going to have to get on the tractor tomorrow." So I know what we'll be doing today. He will mow the front acres, and at the same time, I'll get on the riding lawn mower to do the area around the house. We have three acres, and it's sometimes an awful lot to keep neat. The house needs cleaning. It got dusty with nobody here but the cat here. And I'm sure the bird feeders are all empty, probably have some pot plants that are dry -- the ones that sit under the eaves out of the rain. So it will be a busy day, and yet, I am so anxious to get at it I am up before dawn, just waiting for the first light to arrive so I can go see how everything out there fared.

And as I sit and wait, it occurs to me that there is just something special about home. Even though I love to travel, to see new places, the way other people do things and live, there is still nothing finer than ones own piece of the world. Mine is admittedly less lovely than the mountains I've been in the last week, but it's my nest and I'm happiest here.

I have yet to hear from the opinion page editor at the paper. Had the laptop with me the whole time I was gone, and he never emailed or responded to the last one I sent to him. It's Saturday so I know I can't reach him today, but will call first thing Monday to see if he wants to publish the damned thing. If not, or if I don't get some kind of satisfactory answer, I will simply pull it to send elsewhere. At the very least our little rural paper would probably be delighted to have something different, maybe even a bit controversial, to publish in their weekly. But of course, my aspirations are higher. They always are.

Meanwhile, I've been thinking about cleaning my files, looking through some of those old, unfinished short stories. One in particular has been picking at me lately. Does it take twenty years to finally figure out what a story is about? Maybe. I still find the workings of the mind to be infinitely fascinating. Even if it's my own.

Onward ....