homing pigeons

I sat on the carpeted floor and cried.

Twelve hours of moving at seven months pregnant, in the hot June heat, and I was done.

The kind of done where all you can do is sit on the floor.  Boxes piled around.  The unfamiliar smell of a new apartment, the shadows of unpacked boxes, the echoing noise of unfilled space.  It was time for bed, time for rest, and I didn't know where I should go.

In between here and there.  In transition.  In the very middle of things (in medias res).

The only logical solution was to cry.

And with the tears, the new apartment was initiated.  The new place would be privy to my rollercoaster of emotions, the sweat and tears of this dramatic and difficult season of my life.  It welcomed me then, in all my saltiness.

Olivia sat next to me on the floor.  Rubbed my belly, hoping Judah would kick.  Rubbing my back, playing with my hair -- curly and sticky from the heat.  "This will be a good home," she said.

I had a deep sense, then, as I looked around.  The deepest kind of knowing, like a blatant foreshadowing of what's to come.  This was home.  I would have to build it.  I would have to break it in.  I would have to introduce it to all my dysfunction and all my worries and all my flaws.  But life was about to happen here.

I had chosen well.

~

Larry brought Judah's crib into the new apartment the next day.

He sat down for a minute.  Quietly said, "this looks like a good home to me" before heading out the door.

I felt a sharp pang of melancholy as the door shut.  Looking at the box with the disassembled crib, I was acutely aware of whose job it really is to put such things together.  Painfully aware of who was supposed to take on that role...

And who wouldn't be there to do it.

~

Yesterday I texted Larry and reminded him that, once again, I'd come full circle.  

You see, the Vaughans used to live on Redding Rd.  

Some of my earliest memories are sliding down a snowy hill in a baby pool and having a big German Shepherd dog pull us back up to the top of it, only to slide down again.  I remember an old man we called Brud and his dog named Hanna.  And we all lived there on Redding Rd.

Full circle.

I am back at one of my starting places.  

Larry mentioned that after leaving my apartment, he had taken a little detour.  And I smiled, knowing how much I am like my dad.  How much I need things to tie together, to make sense, to come full circle.  

Our family's old apartment, actually, is in the same place my sister and her husband now live.  When I mentioned this to Larry, his response was short and sweet.

"You all are like homing pigeons." 

~

Do you know what a homing pigeon is?  

A simple description is a bird, which can instinctually find its way home over extremely long distances.  

I sat there for a moment.  Just smiling.  Thinking, this may be the very best description of myself.  

The paths life has taken us down have been tremendously steep and winding, often unfamiliar.  

But I am not sure there is a single one of us who doesn't know how to find our way home.  

As far as we stray.  As much as we mess up.  As easily turned around as we have gotten... 

Our true north is home, and somehow we are guided by a deep, intrinsic sense of belonging.  

~

So I've returned to Redding Rd.  

Perhaps Judah's first memories will come from the same neighborhood mine do.  

And the cyclical, logical nature of this soothes and comforts me.  

In a sense, I have brought myself home.