Less forgivable might be my many minor slanders against our exile place, a fine, even delightful place that doesn’t seem to sit quite as comfortably on my palate. I am prejudiced against my step-mother town, where I currently, physically live, and prejudiced in favor of the mother that raised me, where I can only visit now. This judging wears me down.

I can excuse or explain much, but this world needs neither excuses nor explanations, but my engagement. My stories of exile probably inhibit my full engagement, and so qualify as first class sins. Perhaps I fear adapting too well, of losing whatever identity my insistent association with home place provides, uncertain who I might turn out to be out there. The effect washes out whatever local color I might retain. I feel transparent, insubstantial.

Visiting is hard work. The 24/7 guesting—heck, the extended appreciating alone—strains the psyche. We flit from stop to stop, sometimes forgetting to bring our selves along. As the visit winds down to the final day, the kinetic energy that propelled us here seems about played out. We savor every second, but our all-too finite appetites seem quenched. There’s no storing up mom time to nibble later, no snitching snippets of granddaughter energy to refresh with next week. The reservoir splashes over the dam.

The Parade of Lights will cap off this excursion into this once and possibly future home. I’m already plotting an early Springtime return to work the yard, to sweat off a few more original sins. I will leave as if I’d learned my lesson this time, though I doubt I will have. I will continue to prefer the old familiar and semi-secretly revile the newly revealed.

I must live somewhere, and where ever I find myself, I might improve my experience by simply living there, not endlessly pining to be homebound, but simply living, ... even there. Nobody seems to benefit from my thumb on that scale. If today can stand on its own two legs, yesterday and tomorrow probably can, too. I’m probably just passing through, where ever I might find myself, home or anywhere else.

©2013 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: Living, Manifesting, Writing, Homebound