Visit Home

I stepped out of the car.  The night was dark, sky speckled with glittering stars, soft sweet dusty fragrance of California summer rising to meet me.  A great elemental peace fell upon me, as if in my whole self were sighing in organic relief - home! Roots reach up again to connect with thirsty branches, and a sense of ease and completion settles over me.  People talk about having a sense of "place," and I feel what that means every time I return to visit my parents home.  I feel like rejoicing in the smallest, most mundane things - turning my eyes upon the arch of sky in its particular shade of summer blue, savoring the toasty warmth of sun on my face and arms, walking over the soft, slippery gold of mown weeds - I cannot express how it fills and grounds and lifts me.  I even find nostalgia in my heart for the neglected fields behind the clay factory that I walk by on my way from the dentist's office to the park.  

Of course, as I realize, it is easier to feel those things when being there is a privilege instead of a necessity, when my visits are by choice and eagerly anticipated instead of by circumstance and unexpected.  But oh! I simply love that combination of people and place and feel in my very being every nuance of season and space.  I so wish I could have it all there! :)

On Friday, much of the family gathered for a dinner and visiting.  Things have changed since our last visit - babies are older, new babies born, all growing and changing and experiencing new things.  There is so much to talk about and catch up on, and its hard to do all at once! We catch each other in little aside conversations, over changing diapers and setting the table, asking and listening, sharing the tidbits that make up our daily life.  And then it gets late too soon and babies must be put to bed and long drives home undertaken far too soon to have our fill of the visit.  We were able to fit in some music though, with accompanying laughter and tears.  Laughter, because of the sheer hilarity of certain family members in combination with each other...

My brothers, egging one another on in lusty harmony (and sometimes disharmony!) with "Let Me Be Your Salty Dog" and other old favorites thrown together into silly medleys of mostly bluegrass with a few nursery rhymes and hymn refrains thrown in for good measure.  I am trying not to wake my sleeping baby on my lap, trying not to wet my pants, laughing so hard I am crying and struggling to breathe.  Its not just the comedy of the moment, great though that is.  I am transported back 15 years to sweaty homeschool days, remembering those same two brothers whanging away on fiddle and banjo, blasting out trumpet duets, experimenting with mandolin and voice and style in the downstairs bedroom between 4:30 and 5:30pm (sometimes even earlier if algebra and civics were particularly dull that day!) while I studied spanish and browsed the chicken catalog upstairs.  

Tears, because having the family all together brings tender hearts and easily touched feelings quickly to the surface again.  Singing hymns in sweet melody, blending our voices in praise and song, brings the angel band close around us and fills my soul with a "peace that passeth understanding," sets my heartstrings to reverberating in celestial chords and choruses, even the kind I "cannot sing."

I also love to be home to watch my parents parent.  They were wonderful parents to me, and I can only hope to be as wise as they have been.  It is a unique situation at the moment, because my mother has the opportunity to watch two grandchildren full time some days while their mother, my sister, goes to school.  Eden is somewhat behind them in age, but I love to see her in action, so to speak, as the caregiver of these young ones and learn from not only my memories but directly from her example.  For one thing, I so very much appreciate seeing her wisdom in its real-life application!  But for another, it helps me not to romanticize her mothering.  Mom is, and has always been, a wonderful mother - couldn't be a better - but it helps me to remember that even so, she is not perfect nor was she as we were growing.  And its ok! Heavenly Father gave us imperfect mothers to bless us!  She has very definite ideas, principles she bases her parenting choices and actions upon, but it is not a formula or in any way a rigid plan - this is living parenting!  It helps me to relax and breathe and be at once more flexible and more determined about my mothering.  I try to observe and absorb all I can while I'm there.

Yes, it was a truly wonderful visit, for many reasons even beyond these, but now we are back at home in Alaska.  And while I am so happy to be reunited with my dear husband again, I can feel the dark clouds of discontentment and depression hovering at the edges of my mind, just waiting for the slightest breeze to sail out and blot out the light.  I won't look at them!  I know they are there, but I am determined to choose the happiness that is here for me and let the light continue to shine.  This is a good life, too! 

As for sharing my experience with the miscarriage - I do not share it to say "poor me," or to in any way to compare it to anyone else's experience, grief, or healing.  I do not share it to hang out dirty laundry.  I do not share it to have a juicy story to chew over.  There is more I will share, partly because this is my blog and I can if I want to, ;) and partly because I think that we share very easily the small, sound-bite smiles and trials of our lives, somewhat less easily the big bright sunbursts of joy, and, paradoxically, too easily and yet not enough, the big struggles and trials.  Too easily the complaints, the self-pity, the blaming and anger.  Not enough, the depths, the changes that come, the new understanding that you can only come to after being broken.  The comfort that can be found even while in the mists of sorrow and struggle.  I do think that the first has to come out somewhere, especially if its been held in for a while, like pus out of a festering wound. And I do think that the second can only be shared in appropriate times and ways to be truly communicated at all, especially in person.  But there is a wonderful and strange effect when it can be shared.  Somehow it is healing, both to the hearer and the speaker.  Honestly shared, it allows us the courage to continue living as imperfect beings in a fallen world.  I never wanted to be a part of the secret club of women who have lost a baby to miscarriage.  But how grateful I was for the understanding of those who had also gone through that valley when I found myself there.  It was, as much as anything, the knowledge that I was not alone.  So, if one person reading my experience is going through, has gone through, will go through a struggle and can find hope and light in sharing or knowing mine... well, I would be honored.