All profound experiences appear trivial. Just another in a long stream of mornings, punctuated only by my slight surprise. We play peek-a-boo with the universe, sometimes almost scaring ourselves.

The days get easier somehow. After years of getting lost, we’re eventually found. I’ve learned the patterns, discovered the short-cuts, and can now almost imagine how to get from here to there. My imaginings pretty reliably work. We’re feeling more at home here since we moved, a scant half mile shift seems to have positioned us just that much closer to an alternate center of the universe. We suddenly, after three and a half years, feel like we belong.

Christmas magic seems to be kicking in. Yesterday, the Capitol Hill wreath monger told us to take two for the price of one. “Get ‘em out of here, please,” he said. Our Italian deli was celebrating Natale, stuffing us with sausages and cheese as we ordered our Christmas delicacies. Our clerk today at the grocery gave us a Christmas CD, inviting us to play it for the kids. “They won’t believe it’s Christmas music,” she said. Yea, Black Sabbath covers Christmas on one track. The liquor vendor invited me into the back room for a taste of twenty six year old scotch, really special stuff he’d bought the last of. “Merry Christmas,” he implored.

And today, The Muse, finally home long enough since the shift, found her traction and unpacked her sewing room and her office. Yesterday, we hung the pictures, ridding the basement staging room of that leaning pile of frames. Nephew and his family arrive from Ithaca later tonight, and they’ll find a functional guest room. A sewing room transformed into a temporary kid’s room, thanks to our new neighbors loaning their inflatable bed. The kitchen works. No boxes left in any room normally traversed.

Tonight, I swiped enough sand from the backyard sandbox to anchor eight luminarias, lunch bags of sand, votive candles flickering within. These will warmly welcome what family we have out here in our far eastern exile, believably faking a decent resemblance of home.

Every ending spawns another beginning. We might more usefully parse our endings as beginnings; us grizzled survivors of the latest apocalypse, starting all over again.

©2012 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: Homefull Homeless