cedar_grove | Home Is...

In the heart, a merry fire burned, or cedar and of sandalwood, so fragrant that a visitor smelled it from afar. Calypso sat there, busy at her loom, her golden shuttle darting and her light voice lilting with song. A thick forest surrounded her home, with alder, poplar, and cypress, whose sweet smell hung in the air like smoke. And in the trees great birds had nested: owls and hawks and crows of the sea. efore her door grew a massive vine so hung with grapes it seemed the fruit would break the branches. Four streams passed neary, irrigating beds of violets and flowering herbs. Even the gods were charmed when they visited Calypso's home.

--Homer, The Odyssey

Within each of us, too, there lies a dream of home, of a place where we can e at peace and at rest.

The cliche, 'home is where the heart is' is particularly poignant for me. And home has multiple meanings each of different significance.

Home is where I come to after a day at work, where I can throw on house clothes or PJs, or lie down and take a nap, or rail, or cry, or put on loud music, or soft, and just be. I have a place such as this in my apartment in Cairo... and when I was not there, it was my bedroom in my parent's house in Leicester.

Home is where my parents have a home - a place I know that if all else falls, I can come to, find solace safety and a place to stay. Yes there were a couple of occasions when I have made the call, to ask, "can I come home." Even knowing that I didn't need to ask, still I asked anyway. When Alec and I separated in 2003, that was the last time... and as always I received the answer, "of course you can." Whether that is a place called home or a 'people' called home I'm not so sure. The nurturing and protection of parents, and particularly of Mother.

But Home... true home that truly is wherein my heart dwells. Ironically it is the one place where I am not allowed, as yet, to stay for more than 90 days. Home is the love, and the jobs, and the games and the activities and the space that I share with Mir. It is where I feel safe, and loved. Where I know I will be accepted for who and what I am with all of my faults as well as my virtues alike - and where I do the same. It is the combination of both of the first two 'meanings' of home, and yet is more than either - far more - because there is a sense of the 'inner' in the Home I share with my beloved... with the one that holds my heart and my life in her hands that defies definition because to do so diminishes it, and yet at the same time has a spiritual dimension that makes it truly a part of me on a deeper level than just coming back to a space in which I am safe and loved.

I think it is that inner notion of Home that defines a part of who I am both together with, and apart from my wonderful guy.