Home in Our Pockets - Girl of Cardigan

Cacophony is the word, the sound word for the flux and the mayhem and the movement here lately.  I am caught up in the hunt for quiet spaces – long walks, peaceful conversations, the easy silence of pieces of home.

There are two, currently, on the top bunk, reading aloud to each other in sister-hush whispers, and two, mother and son, curled somewhere dreaming below me on the bottom floor.  There is a half-sick husband shuffling, and old dog attempting a nap, and somewhere, a mostly-owned puppy is chewing something she probably shouldn’t.

Cacophony.  Harsh clanging grace.

Home is the name of this place temporarily, for those of us who have slept here for dozens of months stacked end to end, for those who are currently harbored in the hopeful lilypad stopping space of these walls, for those who have long come and gone and left behind their head prints on the pillows, their dust in the corners, their shadows on the walls.

We are coming and going things, all of us, passing and knowing each other, reaching and holding for awhile, keeping when we can, letting go when we must.  We are brave and breaking and carrying on.  We are the laughter space between the stress tears, we are too many bodies squeezing past in the doorways, we are heartbeats and magic shows and transitions and time.

And home is the name of this place at the moment, but home is also the crush of a wave I can hear like a heart call somewhere waiting.  Home is a chapel door behind a bookshop, a name carved on a tree, each step of a long walk on a well traveled path.  Home is an elf in the forest, the sound of your latest-night laughter, a thousand conversations we haven’t begun.  Home is the you that you were when she held you, the you that you are when he smiles.  Home is the heartbroken goodbye, the silent way you were here and then gone, the sound of a friendship, or a dwelling space, or a lifetime that has run its course.

Some hands are home, some hearts, some daydreams.  Some cacophonies.

We do well to scatter our home out among them.

Because we, because home, is a coming and going thing.  I will carry this piece of your home in my pocket – this moment, this memory, these walls.  Will you carry this piece of my home on your shoulder, in your kind words, clasped in your hands like hope for me?  You may come and go, for the pieces are many.  The walls may change, the faces, the inches stack up on the children faster than we’d ever imagine, but nobody worry – we’ve got home all around us.  We’ve got home all over.

We’re bound to run into it exactly when we need.

Girl of Cardigan