I’ve been working away from home and travelling a lot as part of this work role. This past week, I was in a different town pretty well each night. So it was with much pleasure that I arrived home on Friday night with a few days in my blessed and special home and village.
It’s hard to describe what makes a sense of home but loved ones being there or close by is a central ingredient. For my home and village, it’s the sunshine, the water, the birds that visit that like the kookaburra above who joined me for my breakfast on my return, my personal library of favourite books, the feel of familiar carpet and river slate tiles under my feet, my own bed, a warm bath and trees outside every window rustling in an early August breeze. And it’s all blissful.
I’m lucky. I live in a special place, a village I choose to call home that is surrounded by beach and bush. As an introvert who works hard with many people interactions in my day job, both my village and house are places of retreat and recharge. A place to rest, walk, feel the sand under my feet and the water flowing over them; a place to read, write, reflect; a place of solace and replenishment; of good food, words and wine; and a place to be myself with people who love me.
Being away so much and coming back, it’s easy to focus on what is not right: the weeds in the garden beds; the renovations still not finished after months of weekend work; the stuff that’s not tidy or finished; the clutter here and there. But this weekend has been about focusing on what is right and perfect now in this house, this village, my life: a loved and loving partner; a gorgeous independent daughter with so many skills, passions and opportunities; my gentle beautiful mother; the view, the trees, the beaches and bush, the books, the creative inspirations and connections and my independence to explore it all.
I’ve gone back to a couple of my favourite authors too in coming home: May Sarton and Marion Milner, both of whom wrote journals and explored a sense of home and happiness. Their words are thoughtful and reflective identifying the passions and the hopes in being and coming home:
My daydreams are nearly all of country cottages, of little gardens, of ‘settling down’ with flowers in vases and coloured curtains. I don’t think of backaches, dish washing.
I want to live amongst things that grow, not amongst machines. To live in a regular rhythm with sun and rain and wind and fresh air and the coming and going of the seasons I want a few friends that I may learn to know and understand and talk to without embarrassment or doubt.
I want to write books, to see them printed and bound. And to get clearer ideas on this great tangle of human behaviour.
To simplify my environment so that a vacillating will is kept in the ways that I love. Instead of pulled this way and that in response to the suggestion of the crowd and the line of least resistance
From “A Life of One’s Own”, Joanna Field (Marion Milner), Virago Press, p 51
I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my ‘real’ life again at last. That is what is strange – that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone here and ‘the house and I resume old conversations’
From ‘Journal of a Solitude‘ by May Sarton, Norton, p 11
I also remember that the book I am currently reading is ‘Coming Home’ by Rosamunde Pilcher. Home and the significance of its sense of place in the midst of coming and going and change is clearly on my mind and I am seeking its comfort in both a physical and spiritual sense. I take these reflections with me as I head into a new week and new month full of opportunity.
