Today was one of those lonely, gray-dripping spring days where taciturn clouds lay like bruises on the belly-tight sky. The promise of rain flirted and teased, but it never fell. All week long, I've needed that place where rain is kept, held, carried: a kind of womb inside the clouds. I could hide my Home-sick-for-whatever-is-more-than-mortal soul in there and feel relieved.
I taught a few tired lessons to some precocious and talented little piano students who require much more energy and direction than I was willing to give.
I met up with my life-long friends (at least those of us still in UT -- a few are on the east coast) to celebrate our Julyn's graduation from college. We sat around her mother's kitchen table whose patina shines with fourteen-year's-worth of our smiles and our tears, our readings of obituaries and mission calls and wedding announcements, our celebrations of babies born and hearts uncloseted; its history is full of our fingerprints and prayers. We've written sonnets to that table, but they're really sonnets to each other.
I stopped by my brother's house for a short visit. My darling nieces, Pretty Girl and Sweet Pea, were just rising from naps, poking tousled heads and rumpled shirts around the corner of the stair, making sure it was me who was walking in the door before they yelled UNCLE NIC!!! and jumped into my smiling arms. They told me quick stories about Beauty and the Beast and the white blossoms on the trees outside and riding on the lawnmower with daddy and napping after because it is hard work to tidy up a back yard. Their beautiful mother cut slices of angel food cake, drizzled with fresh strawberries, and we licked our fingers.
I refueled my car. I looked out from the station and surveyed the view. New-green willow trees and weed-draped fencelines and the sky-swept Wellsville mountain peaks--
We crave certain places and people and things because they're where our spirits recognize themselves.Isn't it nice to be (at least) home -- if not Home -- on a gray-cloud day?
