Leaving Home

This could actually be Christmas in Connecticut, Part Two. The second picture is what I saw when I opened my curtains the morning I left Connecticut. In the first photo, there I am, looking like a tree trunk,...but without twinkly lights. Nobody told me it was BYOD (bring your own decorations). It was...brisk.

I realized, bringing my mom cross country to live in the wild, wild west, that something one of my best friends from CT told me wasn't quite true. "You'll never be back, now." I figured he had a good chance of being right, but that somehow I couldn't quite let go my hold of such a big part of me. I'd have to get back - to see the few remaining friends there, to crunch through magnificently painted fallen leaves in Autumn, to savor Tulmeadow Farm's amazing ice cream, to kayak down a sleepy river. But what if he were right? What if, like Thomas Wolfe says, you can't go home again? Then it dawned on me - whether I ever physically go home again or not, all I need to do is close my eyes and be still and I'm there. Imagination is a lot like Dorothy's ruby slippers. Whether it's home we're going to or a place we've invented in one of our books, it's all quite real, and it's all right there.