A Loving Homecoming...

I am home.  All is well.

The kids did a great job of taking care of everything with Maria and my mom’s oversight.  All the babies are good and well and the house was the best it has ever been when cared for by two teenagers...

I allowed myself enough time getting home to get myself unpacked, get some laundry done, shower and go to bed at a reasonable time...and I slept through the night for the most part.  I started on the trip waking up at 1:30 am.  I am not up for long, but I don’t know what is special about that time, but I have been waking up at 1:30 am for about two weeks now.  Weird.

It was good to come home.  Even though I could have stayed out there forever, it was good to have a home to come back to.  It was good to have this life to come back to.  It was good to have my family and friends to come home to.  And it is good to go back to work today at a job I am grateful to have.

I know that a large part of the the homecoming being so successful is because I slept 9 of the 12 hours of my flight home.  I’m not sure what sleeping God I prayed to over there, but I am so fucking grateful.  I do not do hungry, tired or late well, like at all.  I am just an ass...even though I try not to be.  I am, regardless.

While I was away I really developed this idea that sanctuary isn’t about a place, it is a state of being within you.  It can be manifest in your home or garden or place of worship, but those places are less material than the way you feel in your own skin.  And while I was away, I learned to hold my body, mind and spirit in a sanctuary like fashion.  So sanctuary is wherever I am.

It was lovely though to return home to my home base.  The place my life occurs day after day.  This place that is a little chaotic and wild, but a place of restful repose, nevertheless.  At least to me.  Others might find all the kids and pets and pet fur a little off putting.  But for me, it is where I want to be, living with these kids and animals.  They are my home base and the love I receive and give to them a wonderful foundation for living.  The exchange of love on a hour to hour basis is something I really missed while I was gone.

I love travel.  I love going and exploring and all the newness.  But coming home to all the things that you miss while you are gone is a kind of good that you cannot know until you leave it and come back to it.

I am not the same person I was before I left.  Hell, I am not even the same person I was in Bali or Australia.   All the places I traveled changed me. New Zealand the most though...I can’t describe it, I just know I want to return...soon.

I guess that is the best sign of an adventure well had, you are so glad you went and you are glad to be home.  And I am all of those things and more.  Leaving home is always hard and sometimes, returning home has been differently hard...but today, I am very grateful I am here living this life, in this place, with these beings.

Again, still.