Place

I grew up in southern New Hampshire.  My memories are of hiking in the shadows of the great naked shoulders and vertebrae of the earth, swimming in the pools that collect in her dimples, picking strawberries in the grassy fields that clothe her.  As an adult I find myself in Maine, perched on her knuckles as she dips lazy fingers in the sea. 

Initially, I had intended a different topic for this week's post.  But Friday night, as I was walking down our road from a neighbors', the full moon casting blue shadows on the snow, I came over the ridge and saw our house nestled in the curve.  John made it home first and the lights were on, inside and out, icicles glittered from the eaves under a snow-laden roof, the path to the door was neatly shoveled between two-foot-high banks of snow; it looked as if Mrs. Claus herself would meet me with a tray of tea or a cup of hot chocolate.  This is home.

This has been a year of finding all the homes in my life.  There are the many homes of my past, where friends and family still reside or share memories.  There is the home of my physical present, this cottage by a cove.  There is the home in myself, a place I have found anew, or maybe for the first time, this past year.  Every time I meet someone since we moved here, I am struck by the realization that it is someone I am supposed to know; and as the heart can stretch to make space, even demand it, for each new child, so it does for each new friend. 

We are in the midst of a cold snap; to be out by the cove today we could have been on some Alaskan shore, trees heavy with snow in the weak light and not a soul to be seen.  Nonetheless, my winter's come and gone already; I am home, nourished in this place.