There are moments lately where a stinging kind of sadness washes over me. For a moment I feel it, a slight burn course through my insides, and then I take a breath, quick at first, then slower, deeper. It passes me by then, gone almost as fast as it came. Mostly it happens when I’m in the car driving, the world slipping by outside the windows, the sun hitting the mid-range of sky, before it starts to fall, the space where it starts to make my eyes squint. For a split second I’m not sure where I’m going. A kind of momentary confusion hits, the kind you get when you wake up in a strange place. Sometimes, in that blink of time, I’m tempted to drive into that almost-there sunset and disappear. That all of the road, of change, of the things I’ve left behind, tugs at me me in those moments.

“So I packed my car and I headed east,
where I felt your fire and a sweet release.”

“Nothing Left To Lose” by Mat Kearney
from the album, Nothing Left To Lose (2006)
Song Of The Day – August 1, 2011

The road home. It’s been my road home before, and that echo can be cloying. I grab hold of the things I love about this place, tangle my fingers in the familiarities that brought me back, and at the same time I try to see the difference. We are starting something new here, putting down roots, planting them together, if not in the ground (we are both wayward souls), then in each other. I vary between remembering and forgetting, dropping anchor and fighting the tether, feeling tired and feeling free.

Most of the time it’s the chosen side of the coin. Most of the time the road doesn’t pull me off and away. Not yet.