We've been back in North Carolina for a week and a half now, but not home. Though the word home evokes many memories of family and friends here, there, and everywhere, even in the mountains where we lived for five years, we are not yet there. I think back to California and The Oaks, our most recent home. The song, "It Feel Like Home to Me," just popped into my head--laughter, sarcasm, general loud-ness, kids running in and out, coffee, food, sisters, brothers, nephews & niece, friends, sitting on the carpet--all these things are something that word remembers...but no specific place encloses them all the time.
I have loved all the houses we have lived in--even the first apartment Dave and I had, which flooded several times and gave me the worst allergic reaction to mold I have ever had to anything. But the people I know from those places are what I think of when I think of home. In Bryson City, NC it is playing Settlers with Erin and Beth, and even Kerby, breakfasts and books with Sophie, drinking coffee in Mountain Perks--knowing most of the people that walk in (and it being the only place I have ever frequented where someone knew I had a "usual"), NOC's River's End Restaurant with my friend Hazel--thinking of the first time we met and literally "learning the ropes," The Grove Church on Sunday morning. In California "home" is long walks on the beach with Ben King (lol)--him helping Dave and I discover the wonders of Ventura, sitting in the soccer field at The Oaks--with Sam & lil Mel, coffee with Heather--pouring our hearts out on each other's couches, Olive Garden with my three ladies, book club, game nights, our community church, desert sunsets. Here in Richfield, "home" almost always revolves around holidays--putting up Grandmama's Christmas tree...and everything else (ps thanks for all the help on that other Fisher kids), seeing the Eddy's & talking about football & beer & politics, watching all my nephews & 1 niece run around, playing Catch Phrase with my siblings--and laughing hysterically, BBQ and sweet tea, my friends Heather & Jake--talking movies & watching our kids be weird....and on and on and on it goes...and will keep going.
Home. It brings a lump to my throat. So sweet, tender, yet tough and adventurous--pulsing brightly with each ring it adds, like tree growth each year its circle gets wider, with each person added to our hearts. Home is not so far away as it seems at the moment. Living in a borrowed room, but aren't we always living on "borrowed time" in a "borrowed world?" "This world is not my home, I'm only passing through"...home: it is eternity with these people. It is a campfire in the back yard that never goes out. There are no walls that can contain it.
