There And Back Again

At some point, here becomes there and what was home isn't any longer.  I separated from my husband, left my daughter in a state I had claimed as mine for almost 50 years, and sailed from the Virgin Islands to Florida with a man I hadn't seen since high school, a man I hardly knew in all the ways we think we have to know a person, but whom I knew intimately, profoundly as I find now and again with a sense of shock and wonder.  I leaped willingly, without hesitation, in the name of love but home, well that was still, despite days at sea and the clear, crystal beauty of the Caribbean, a tiny townhome in Sacramento, even though if you would have asked me at any point the last few months, I would have told you I was never going back.  I would have told you my home was this boat, this man, this life, and it was true.  And yet ....
It's the 'And Yet' that tells you the truth of things.

Over Labor Day I went back to Sacramento for my daughter's 19th birthday.  Chloe's dad was away at a conference and I figured it was a great time to have her meet Bryan and to celebrate with her a day I haven't missed celebrating since her birth.  We left after work, chased the day that was passing across the country, landing just before midnight in Sacramento.  It was a whirlwind trip, just a few days and two cross-country flights.  As happy I was to see Chloe, I felt unsettled, out of place.  Yeah it was the stress of first meetings, but there was something else.  When I went back to the house to get some things I needed for the cold weather I hope will one day come to Florida, it was both familiar and not, this house I had spent the last twenty years in, mine and not, house but not home, there but not here.  For about an hour I moved about this place I had lived for so many years and felt how little of me was left in the wood and plaster, the things that I left behind.  Here had become there, but where was my new here, my home?

I'm still living in Fort Lauderdale, still on Susurru.  Every morning I head to work; every afternoon I return.  We fix dinner together, do weekend chores.  We've gotten a cat.  I'm where I want to be but am I ready to call this home -- this man, this boat, this place?  This has become here and home and to be honest, I'm scared.  Yes I'm in love; yes I made the leap across a continent, leaving everything I knew behind.  But to put down roots, or to admit to them, to make all this home with all that means, to trust this man with the heart and soul of me?  Of course, this assumes that I have any control over roots and heart, that I haven't already built my home with this love as my foundation.  Isn't this what we always do, think we can be wiser this time, smarter, not give ourselves or our hearts until it's right?  I wonder sometimes if happily ever after isn't as much luck as anything, more luck than anything.  I get that we don't always get what we want but what we need.  I'm just not sure there's much comfort in that when you have given your tender heart to someone, built a home there, unsure of the trueness of your foundations, letting time prove what your heart only guessed at, hoped for, dreamed of.

Well, here I am, ready or not.  We'll see if the house I'm building is safe and sound.  May it be so.