In which this is home

People write our address in pencil. 

We started out in a tiny apartment just off a Tulsa interstate and we felt like we were playing house, hardly grown up enough for this surely. (Most would agree.) We were poor and friends dropped off canned food when they came to visit. Almost every night, we woke up in the morning and could hardly believe that we were there together. Can you believe it, love, we're living together?

And then we found our way to second floor apartment beside a lazy Texas spring fed river that would swell in the flood season and heavy live oak trees that spread wide. We welcomed friends and got a few stains on a canvas green couch from many teenagers stopping by to chat. But I hid in that apartment, scared of ministry, scared of my own self and content to wear opinions and know-it-all-ness like a garment while you walked out who you were all along and prayed and waited for me to grow up.

Then there was our first house, a rancher on a street with no trees. I had a panic attack one night while it was being built because it was in the suburbs in a small town in Texas and, oh my God, this is NOT what I signed up for at all, love. But you were what I signed up for and you are always enough.

So maybe it's not that loft in an urban centre like I dreamed about but then you wouldn't be there and you are home and so here I'll stay with joy. The first glimmers of my true self began to reemerge in that house and my best friends were on both sides and across the street and around the corner so we sat out on our driveway in the thick summer air staring at the stars feeling settled. We packed up and when we drove away, home to Canada, I cried and I think I felt more homesick for that small Texas town in the hill country than I ever had when I moved away from my childhood home.

Then there was the high rise apartment in the busy city street with transit and sirens, city parks and I glowed with life while you felt far away from yourself, longing to see the stars at night instead of city light. Then there was the basement apartment with the new baby in the city in the country and then back again to the city where we lived on top of each other, an apartment the same size as that first one but now we had a family of four walking tree lined streets in the springtime. And then, our family home, this semi-detached house-becoming-home next to the blueberry fields beside the forest and a creek that you gloat over like you made it. We gave birth to our littlest girl right here in this living room and you cradled  her to yourself in the dawn rising.

We have packed up boxes and moved and moved and moved, criss-crossing the country and the region.

And even if I finally feel at home here and you finally feel at home here and we're raising all these babies, the truth is I'd move again for you. I'd go to India and I'd go to a small town in Nebraska, I'd go to London and I'd stay right here until we die in this house.

I'd go where you wanted to go and where we needed to be without even a thought because, darling, you are my home.

*****

To just write and not worry if it’s just write or not. 

This Friday's prompt: HOME

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back at Gypsy Mama's and invite others to join in.
3. Get a little crazy with encouragement for the five minuter who linked up before you.