Home is a moving target

This is the post I wrote on Facebook in early September 2015 when I realized we needed to return to Florida.  I wrote these words with a very heavy heart because in coming north, I had just wanted to come home.  But I had to eventually face the reality that the places which had always been home to me no longer were.  I came to realize that home is wherever Jim, Carl and I may be.  Even if it's in a hotel room.  Or an RV.  We learned to cling hard to each other.  Like hikers lost in a snowstorm, we kept each other warm to survive.

There's a part of me that wishes I could just wash my hands of my old home.  It is no longer the source of comfort, companionship and merriment that it once was.

However, I would not take back our time up north.  There was so much beauty there.  I saw it when the heavy snowfalls descended outside our motel room window, and Carl looked out to sights he had never seen in his life.  I saw it when Carl and I built a snowman, threw snowballs, and when I watched Carl, for the first time, fly down a snowy hillside, whooping for joy.

I saw the beauty over the dozens of miles I trod in the winter world, training for the 2015 Delaware Marathon.  Round and round Philadelphia's Schuylkill River Trail.  When I first arrived to the trail, the river was still largely frozen over.  Many days, the path would be thoroughly coated with snow and ice.  I slipped and fell flat on my back once.  Still I pressed on.  A burning force much greater than myself pressed me to face the subzero temperatures and will my feet to course through the miles.

Before I knew it Lady Spring released her gentle breath into the frozen world.  Blossoms peeked out timidly.  The ice thawed on the river and legions of crew teams descended upon the waters.  Canada geese honked and hissed at me along the running trails, defending their young.

The spring unfolded in brilliant glory at Longwood Gardens, where we celebrated Mother's Day.  We drank in the resplendence of miles of flowers, the magical greenhouse and children's garden, the enchanting banana tree and orchid rooms, the gigantic flowering lily pads in the pools...And when I walked into the hills of meadows and drank in the rich green fragrances of the grass, earth and all their inhabitants, I felt as though I had stepped into one of Jane Austen's vast, unspoiled English countrysides...

I truly wanted all this to be home again.  I'm still not entirely sure why - but these idyllic refuges were not enough.  So we would leave these gardens and fields behind...

I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown

Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in..

Joni Mitchell, "Urge for Going"

The farms were getting ready for fall.  Signs for hayrides and apple cider began to appear along the country roads.  The glorious golden sunflowers slowly began to descend their thrones...But we would not be there when they did.  We would not be there to see the raiments of summer slip away into autumn.  Because we had made another hejira, back down the way we came, back to the lands of perpetual summer...

For reasons best known to God, I was meant to be where I could lead the most purposeful life, where I could best use the gifts He gave me.  That place has proved to be Florida.  I was drawn here after college, out of a frigid New York winter into the balmy South Florida havens of sun, ocean, music, dancing, and the meccas of pleasure for the young and adventurous, such as I was then.  It was those things that drew me here.  But it took much more than that to keep me here.  

To be sure, I tried to run away.  Some days I still look around, astounded, as if I went to sleep in my childhood home and woke up here in South Florida.  I look around at the palm trees and the glittering, transient world around me and I am dumbfounded as to how I got here.  

In the beginning, some people told me it takes about six years to get used to South Florida.  It took much longer for me.  For anyone staying here longer than a vacation of a few days or weeks, I think South Florida is very much an acquired taste that not everyone will develop.  

But somehow, I feel as though my Señorita Floridita has always welcomed me in a way that nowhere else did.  As if, whenever I drove over the bridge on the northern border into her midst again, she was embracing me and welcoming me home again.  It has taken many years, but I have learned not to push Señorita Floridita away.   It was in her dominion that I reached my greatest heights - firstly, becoming a mother to my beautiful prince, and secondly, fulfilling my dream of becoming an attorney.  She has given me so many other gifts too.  I will always think back fondly of the beauty and happy memories of my times in my childhood realms.  But destiny had other plans for me.