There is no one there. Not even furniture. Just a familiar fragrance of lost days...a feeling that I've left something behind. A memory unfinished, a day not quite done. Perhaps it is just the need to say goodbye, to touch what was so quickly abandoned, to embrace and accept the conclusion. It could be a type of home sickness. A need for old routine.
Or perhaps it is just the pull of the moon....
I tip toe down the hallway - the three doors open to bedrooms where once my children slept in sweet dreams and old quilts...their breathing like music.
In my dreams I see visions of unmade beds, overnight friends, and laughter that made the the house dance.
I go into my bedroom and remember well the nights I lay awake in bed, listening to the rhythmic snore of my husband beside me, nights waiting for my children to return home from a date, stormy evenings when lightning struck a bit too close for comfort.
I see the closet I rarely organized, the big tub I hated to clean, and dust on the imaginary dresser that my mother-in-law would never have tolerated in her own home.
In the kitchen, can still smell baked lasagna, feel the joy of new dishes, and remember the fun of baking cookies with the grand kids. I recall burnt toast, Thanksgiving turkeys, and the little gray field mouse that could never be caught.
Christmas trees, party lights, theme parties, Halloween - in my dreams they all come thundering into my head at once...a loud hum of unforgotten days that resonate like a beating heart.
I step outside...walk to the edge of the pond- suddenly seeing my kids when they were small, pulling on fishing poles, picking black-eyed- Susan's, skipping rocks till their arms hurt.
I look up. And the sky is just as big and blue and real in my dreams as it was the day I left .
But this is just a house to me now. I do not know it anymore.
I no longer need my dreams to take me here.
Because I realize that home is where the people I love live, visit, and play.
And where the pull of the moon finds you truly happy.
Beautiful!
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