Having Negotiated the Skies

            I do not hold with trend these days of children going away.  Growing up, I am all for.  It’s just that moving out and moving off stuff that I am having a hard time with.  I don’t approve of it.  When children are scattered all over the planet, it’s difficult to be with more than one or two at a time – we, who have spent the last twenty something years binding them all together.

            It took us almost twelve hours to get home, though the journey was not at all difficult.  Ha.  I think of telling this to my ancestors – “Sheesh, all we had to do is get from Rhode Island across the great plains, over the mountains and down to Salt Lake – and it took a flipping twelve hours, can you believe it????”

            The first leg was the longest – five and a half hours in the air.  But I had a sort of existential experience with Sudoku that I have to write to Sharon (who I owe a letter of screaming delight anyway) and Rachel (for whom I have surprises) about, so the time flipped right by.  When we got home, it was too late to do anything but love our bed.  But this morning, as I fought the time difference – swimming up out of sleep like a drunken flounder, I’ll have you know – among the many small, happy plans I’d made, inspired by jaunts with Ginna through Martha Steward and Crate and Barrel, slipping in the darker, larger shadows of what it really means to be home: Thanksgiving in a week, the house a wreck (even after Chaz’s valiant efforts to put things to rights—I mean, have your seen my shower?  No.  And nobody’s going to show you, either), and my dad coming to visit.  Oh, and Christmas, which is the fewest possible days from Thanksgiving that it can possibly get this year.

            So I spent the day looking like a bag person, deep cleaning corners in the bedroom (where no decent person should ever have to go) and trying to organize the catalogues.  The many, many catalogues. I know—sounds frivolous.  But you wouldn’t think so if you realize I’ve been gone for a week, and Char has been piling the mail up around my desk.

            In order to remind myself that I am glad to be here, I am posting a few odds and ends: images from the old homefront.  

An odd little spot of light on the driveway.

An odd bigger spot of light on the lawn.  Hmmmm.

A picture of my sister-in-law’s BASEMENT bathroom, which I took out of pure envy and hopelessness.

Still summer.  The back yard.

The fire pit, used as a compliment to the vinca.

Roots in the front yard.

Harvest

Incipient pie.

The back, at the beginning of Autumn.

Sun going down.

Still going down.

Front window, sun gone down.

That burning bush to the right was the oddest glowing green – these shots are all SOTC just to be fair, so I haven’t tried to get this green up to snuff.  But it was kind of amazing and wonderful.

Young horse, running with saddle.  Nobody’s ridden him yet.  Scary.

Moon, early evening.

Moon.  Closer.

Front – for color.  Inside, it’s warm.

Horse, trying to sneak into the barn by a nose.  Frustrated by the bolt – and me.

Said barn.

Fire on the mountain.

Makes one heck of a sunset.

Two little creatures, discovering each other.  One is a cougar – you can tell by the shirt.

Autumn closes in on the old homestead.

So, really.  Home is cool, right?  There’s cool stuff here.  And life.  There’s life.  So what else could I want?

Yeah.  Gin.