Where I'm From

This post is inspired by Bigger Picture Blogs.



I am from a low land garden, from a cottonwood tree swing and clothespin dolls.

I am from an east facing room with pink walls overlooking a raspberry farm.

From a home made bright by sunrise, from peony, lilac, sweet allysum and Great Lakes.

I am from LaRocks and Carters, Bernadette and Emma, poor and generous, disabled by injury and disease, faithful and strict.


From you can be anything in life if you work hard enough and from respect is earned.

I am from Catholic and Protestant and a discarded Native American way.

I am from Michigan and Canada and France and England, from giant pots of home made soup and lemon merangue pie.

From the grandmother who had 15 babies and died when the youngest was two, and the great grandmother who's breastmilk was poisoned by an abscess from an unhealed injury and whose first four babies died from drinking this milk without her knowledge.


I am from the bookshelf on Brendonwood drive and from the memory of my mother who knows all the stories.  I am from my children's stories they'll tell in the future and from library books about girls in the country coming of age who find love and hardship.

Photo by Emily Holmstrom

If you'd like to share in this great writing exercise, I invite you to visit  http://www.swva.net/fred1st/wif.htm 
 and post your version inspired by the template.  

With New Eyes

If I expose the bones of truth, you would see that the R word is what helps me to live 700 miles from my home state.  This word is not resume, resources, relief, regeneration or restoration. 

It is resentment.

Not towards a specific person,  place or thing.  The resentment is like a cloud of ambigous junk that rests in the back of my mind, ever present, sometimes buried, sometimes popping to the surface like noxious perennial weeds. 

I remind myself to set this burden down.  I know when it creeps it's way into my heart and how difficult it is to redirect my thought patterns.  Meditating on present blessings seems to work better than anything else I've tried. 

And this time, I was able to visit my Mom in mid-Michigan, while also taking a few days to travel to Ludington, a small northern town on the shores of Lake Michigan. Mom was able to join us there, and together we enjoyed this remote paradise.  After 102 degrees in North Carolina, we appreciated the cool breezes, miles of beaches, sand dunes, inland lakes, magical forested hiking trails, camping, shopping and everything in between.  I decided I could live there.

Today is the final day of our trip.  I could stay longer.   Here are a few photos of our vacation "up north." 

If I were able to shop in this grocery, it would be a pleasure and not a chore.  I loved the open, airy feel of the place.  For the first time, I could shop without feeling like a mouse in a maze.  I resisted the giant dougnuts in the back.  But I'm still dreaming of them!

While walking around town, we enjoyed beautiful historic buildings and delightful little shops.  If one wanted a further adventure, the ferry behind this statue will take you and your car across the lake.

Yet while the developed areas were lovely, Richard and I were captivated by the wilderness surrounding the town.  I did not take my camera on our hikes....but if you can imagine what a trail in Colorado looks like, or the beaches on Key West (exept with colder water), then you'll understand why we loved it.

And as I prepare to return to my other "home" in the south, I realize that the physical place where my resentment begins is really just a place.  The resentment stays deep within, following me to new locations and exiles. Realizing this helps me to set it adrift in the sea of letting go.  And remembering that my absence hurts my loved ones....that helps me to put things in perspective.

Home

This week Elliot and I were reading a book about Monarch butterflies. Several days later, the topic of "home"  came up.  I said that I was sort of like a Monarch butterfly, as I started my journey from my childhood home in Michigan and ended up migrating to the south.

He said,  "My home is in North Carolina.  No, actually I'm home everywhere, and so are you.  Our home is Earth.  We are on planet earth and can be home everywhere we go."