Thoughts on Home

There was a time in my life when I said I'd never leave Michigan. It was for real at the time, but then my contentment left, and I followed it west, the big bad world calling me out. I have found other places that I call home since the great exodus of '05, yet there will always be a home for me in the land of green trees, American cars, and gray skies. And it's more than the presence of family, or the memories of small town life and the UofM. When I get off the plane in Detroit, there is something about that first breath of thick humidity that floods my mind with the familiar... sitting with Mom in the garden swing, molding the tar in the cracks of the street with five-year-old toes, sailing in the bay of Lake Michigan and experiencing speed for the first time. As I walk towards luggage claim, I listen to African Americans talk "real black" that screams home to me. I don't want them to stop. They sure don't talk that way in Denver, and damn, do I miss it. Before I get my bags, I stop at Coney Island for a chili dog. It's been years...

Back to the land where there are very few foreign cars, it muses me, almost a surreal experience, all these Fords, GMs, and Chryslers. Detroit is its' own little world. Green trees everywhere, no sky, the trees are always in the way. I make my yearly pilgrimmage to the cabin on Lake Louise, the only place in the world where I completely relax and have absolutely no sense of time. The water is still perfect, it is still so clear that you can see the sandy bottom at a depth of five feet, the pine forest is still the most tranquil place I've ever known, our friends are still family, and I still cry every time I have to leave.

So here's the question... can we have more than one place where we feel entirely at home? My answer is yes. I had lived next to Pikes Peak for two days, two days was all it took for me to fall completely in love with that snow covered mass of rock. Every time I would look at it, it was different. At sunset, silhoutted with orange and purple light, during a storm, with dark black clouds around it's edges and lightening striking the neighboring peaks, in the summer bare naked, and in the fall when the first snow adorns it again. There was something about living next to that mountain that gave me the greatest sense of security and safety. It was a constant that never changed. No matter how many developments and strip malls scar the prairries, that mountain can never be moved.

When I went on to San Diego, I missed the constancy and security of that mountain, but I was wooed by the energy I found in the ocean. "You have to try surfing, Rachel, you'll experience the ocean in a whole new way... it will help you not to miss the mountains so much." Andrea was right.

I don't care that I will probably always be a beginner when it comes to surfing. There is something about the experience that is almost spiritual for me. I stand before those waves with reverence, knowing that they could kill me, and yet, with an addict's will, I smack them head on, paddling out beyond the break with my small arms. I don't know how I get out there to that peaceful place, but I do. Laying on my board, and floating over those gentle rollers, I wait for my wave, and watch the sun dance on the water. I am truly happy.

There is nothing quite as exhilerating as timing and catching that wave. You fight with the ocean to make it's energy work for you... there is a thrill about struggling with something so much more powerful than yourself, something that could kill you, the struggle makes you enjoy it's beauty and energy even more. I love the taste of salt water. My best day is one where I come home feeling beaten, with red, blood shot eyes. Then I know I've lived.

An early morning walk next to the beast that beat me the day before (the ocean!), brunch in LaJolla, a nap on the beach, red wine in the evening, with a good friend. Melissa plays the guitar and sings to me, the most recent song she has written, and my heart is home. Why do I keep wishing that time would stand still, when I know very well that it's always moving? Maybe there's still a child in there, that hasn't quite accepted all of reality, and never will. I still like to wish time away. As with the lake in northern Michigan, I cry when I leave California.

Now I am here in the mile high city, feeling completely at home, enjoying some new culture. Having grown up in the suburbs of Detroit, I was always taught that the city was bad and dangerous (dangerous, for good reason). Now I am experiencing a city that is beautiful, clean, thriving, and safer than the one that I grew up with. Without much effort, I am loving this too.

There is not one place that I call home. And as I've thought more on this, I've realized that home is not a place, it's something that exists inside of me. In my heart I asked God to dwell, and it is those experiences of Him, of His beauty, His presence in nature, in culture, in people, and in memory, where I find home. His presence interfacing with those things which reflect Him. I am not attached to any one place. My heart is joined to Him, and home goes with me wherever I go. I like to think, that maybe I have a whole lot of time left, and there will be more places, more moments that communicate home to me. How exciting.