The Journey, The Home, The Gratitude

It’s funny how a change in routine threw me off my blogging course. It was after seven o’clock tonight when I remembered I hadn’t posted anything on my blog and I certainly didn’t want to “fail” only four days in to the Ultimate Blog Challenge!

Instead, I scooped up a prompt and an image I wrote several years ago and responded here.

This is the result:

The journey itself is my home.”
Matsuo Basho

Question: Write your personal definition of “home”

Home: such an easy definitions for most, but for me – not so much.

I have been longing for home for as long as I can remember and I don’t know that I’ve ever found it. I’ve owned real estate, I have lived under other people’s roofs and no, home remains nebulous.

The most at home I have ever felt is at places where I have never lived which makes no sense at all. I know Dorothy says “There is no place like home,” and it magically gets her back to the family that loves her – but that is as much of a fairy tale as any of the others be they Anderson’s or the Brothers Grimm or a wide variety whose names I don’t know.

Tonight I watched my next door neighbor get escorted out of her house wearing a shorty bathrobe with an older guy in an SUV that had some sort of “justice” emblem on the back. Where was she going? Was she leaving her home for something better, or the house-that-is-seemingly curse for who the heck knows what but it didn’t look very good.

My dog Beth is under my chair because the fireworks are loud and steady and scary to her. Am I providing a feeling of home for her as I tap the keyboard and she feels solace because I am with her? The doggie door is blocked for her own protection. She is probably frustrated that she can’t find escape but she doesn’t know there is even more noise out there than there is here.

Maybe that’s part of what home is: quiet among all the other noisy spaces. A comfort you can’t describe with words because it doesn’t quite make sense yet.

Perhaps defining home will be a part of my next work as my children are almost done growing up and moving out of this place which has given us shelter all these years in this town I have loved to have no feelings for beyond acceptance or resignation.

I do feel alive and enriched when I am on road trips, so the Basho quote rings a distinctive bell.

This journey: turning my heart toward home.

I hear children screaming from a home lit firework of some sort.

I hear Beth breathing below my feet.

I think, momentarily, “Maybe Gratitude is my journey and my home?” It sounds cliché, so I will let it sit in the center of my chest while I sleep. Perhaps there will be a message for me somewhere in those words tomorrow.

Julie JordanScott, the Creative Life Midwife, is a writer, a poet performer, a Creativity Coach, and a Mother of three. One of her
greatest joys include loving people into their greatness they just aren’t quite able to realize yet. To set up a complimentary exploratory session, please visit here. Be sure to follow her on Social Media platforms so you may participate in one of her upcoming events. You won’t want to miss a thing – your future self will thank you!