Home

Home

18 years since I'd been home.

In the days leading up to my return, I thought endlessly of home.

I imagined how I would feel.

I envisioned a grand welcoming upon my arrival.

The wind would dance,

The trees would celebrate,

Stranger and family alike would rejoice that a distant daughter had come home.

I expected to feel a stirring in the deepest part of my being.

I was finally home.

[Pause]

but that did not happen.

No moment of silence, no bowed heads - 18 years.

The wind did not dance. It was stiff.

And the trees?

I could not see them in the midst of the changed and unchanged, the easy and the hard hellos, but mostly the suffering, everywhere.

My homecoming was like a wave upon the shore.

It was ordinary.

It disturbed nothing.

I had left home as a child and returned to find that my chores were waiting for me.

There was no grand welcoming, only the task at hand --and the warm happy feeling of home that escaped many I knew in the place I had been.

I could come home. No questions asked.

That was indeed the glory of it all.