As many of you know the boys and I recently returned from our 'west coast tour'. This summer's trip was so great that we called home and requested an extension from Paul. He (reluctantly) agreed, and so we remained for a full three weeks. Our days filled with exploration, soft grass, quiet parks, long picnics, train whistles, howling coyotes, day trips, family love (and many phone calls home).
With as much stress and change as we have endured in the past six months since our move, I had began to feel like a tightly wound rubber band, ready to snap and hit someone in the eyeball at any given moment. Sadly our house had not been the calm or dream-like haven that our Florida townhouse once was. With only a sixteenth of our things, a miniature apartment in the sky, a new member of the family to get to know and figure out, longer hours and separation anxiety from my best friend and the boy's 'daddieee', we're country mice turned city mice for an undermined amount of time.
We believe in making the best of everything we are given, good and bad. Exploring, engulfing and 'just being' everywhere life takes us, but sometimes this leaves me feeling like I'm devouring the cliff notes to War and Peace the night before book club. (as if, i totally would never do book club) I have held a bit of a short fuse trying to do it all, be it all and recreate our safe, soft nest. I struggle now weaving with old discarded caution tape instead of the fine silken threads I had collected back home. But, this will not stop me, nor has it. This trip home has been an important time for all of us. To step back, look up, and see how much we've built and with nothing more than our family. With so many more changes in store it has felt quite impossible to just live in the moment, until now...
The boys and I played all day, everyday, we read a million stories, we shared a room, we held hands at night as we fell asleep. We explored the streets and towns of my youth, shared ice cream cones, hunted (with our eyes) deer, moose and porcupines at twilight. We rolled our windows down, let the warm dry breeze blow through our hair, and chased each other through freshly cut summer grasses. We spent leisurely mornings at Starbucks sipping milk and lattes and leisurely evenings with my family on the front porch.
I've returned many times to Cheney. It never felt quite right. I visited in the years after college, I flew back many times from Florida, but something was always missing, something always keeping me from....being me. This time it seems I had it all. I came with a handful of babies (ok an armful.) I have buried all that was imperfect about this place about me and now only see the strengths and appreciate the flaws. I ran down roads I hadn't run on since high school and reflected on just how far I'd come. As I passed freshly harvested wheat fields leading to my old high school, a warm breeze blew carried me down the worn roads and the past came rushing back. The girls soccer team, just days before the first day of school, practiced on 'my' old field, the sounds of the marching band wafted though the town and I pounded the pavement as if time had never lapsed.
I reconnected with old friends and took a million photos. As I feel myself coming up out of the valley endless searching that was my 20's and emerging a top a peaceful mountain top in my 30's, I have experienced my friends doing the same. Stopped searching and started being. Friends with new and budding families smiles mirrored on their faces that I'm sure were never as wide since their youth. And I am thankful. For everywhere I've been and everywhere they've been that we should all be so lucky to find love and breed love and come together again in this same place where we all began.
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