Photos from my backyard.
I had a weird day last week where nothing seemed to work. I woke up feeling energized. Motivated to do something physical. Run, hike, be out in nature. My mind was clear and I decided to take Roxy for a walk to Carla & Doug’s. Perhaps it was a little ambitious for her. The roads were full of cars and noise yet I pushed her to continue, mean mom that I am. "It was only about a mile," I thought. She’s done twice that recently. “She’ll be fine.” And she was, although when we got there, no one answered the door.
Having a craving for Doug's quinoa pancakes I decided to wait. We walked around back with the newspaper I’d collected from the driveway and was startled to see Doug and Carla sitting on the back patio clearly embroiled in their conversation and needing privacy. Feeling a little embarrassed, I sheepishly excused our intrusion and we walked home.
So then there was the decision about what to do with the day. I decided to drive to Nederland (Neverland?) by way of several stopping points that someone had suggested earlier in the week. Road map in hand, I headed out expecting to hike and sit by a swimming hole or at least the high waters of Boulder Creek, and maybe photograph some wildlife. We stopped at Boulder Falls and seeing an endless rock stairway, realized it was not the hike for Roxy and continued on to Nederland looking for a lake or a pond with some relief from the heat so we could just hang and read and relax, and she could play with a ball and swim. There was a beautiful reservoir but of course she couldn't swim there so I kept driving. We came across an arts festival and decided to explore the town by foot. Maybe it was my mood, but I just wasn’t connecting with anything or anyone. We spent an hour or so wandering the art booths and left.
Nearly five hours later and feeling somewhat frustrated by the endless driving without really getting anywhere, we ended up back home. No sooner did my mind get to, “What a waste of a day,” did I stumble upon two beautiful bucs having dinner in my front yard. As I meandered the long dirt driveway, one just stared at me while he munched the leaves of a tree not 10 feet from my car. I was reminded of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when she declared to everyone hovering over her after her return from Oz, “I shouldn’t look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn’t there, then I never really lost it to begin with.”
As I got out of the car and shot off a few frames from my camera before the deer took off, I realized that sometimes it takes leaving and returning to see what we’ve had all along. And that just because we think we need to leave the Kansas part of ourselves behind, we never really do. Those parts are always there for us whenever we are ready to welcome them back in.
Sometimes stepping back, taking a break from our roots, our “selves”, our ordinary lives, our partners, our families, our jobs, our home towns, often helps us see the exceptional in the ordinary. And that it is the ordinariness of life that is really extraordinary. Just waking up every day and seeing the sun shine, the birds sing, the ocean roar, your children laughing, your best friend in bed next to you, is more than enough. The human experience of love and loss, of planting a garden, of having a job to go to, preparing and sharing a meal, these are all the truly incredible things we often take for granted. It is the underlying reason I’m divorced. I can see that now. And I still carry around some of that sadness for not having been satisfied with the extraordinariness of my life. Sometimes it takes leaving (or losing) in order to see what we've had – to see how incredible one’s life already is when we go searching for something more. Sometimes it’s too late to return. And we can either learn and go forward, or not. We hope that others, perhaps our children, will learn from our so-called “mistakes” (which of course really aren’t mistakes) and that they will be spared our painful lessons. But of course no one can learn our lessons. Everyone must have their own.
So here I sit wondering where home really is, feeling split between two places that I love. The Florida I left to explore the parts of myself long ago left behind at the doorstep to marriage. And the Colorado which holds so much promise for the me that has learned from my choices. Am I still searching for Neverland? I know now that it doesn't exist somewhere out there. And if I'm not careful, I will once again miss the perfection of today.
Oh Auntie Em, there’s no place like home.”
