Woodstove On A Rainy Night - Yellow Springs Ohio, 2006

I leave work, coming out of the library into a driving rain, glad for my new umbrella and happy at the prospect of a quiet evening at home. I make a bit of supper and eat it while reading a book, and then I read some more. I listen to the cold rain beating on the house, and decide it would be a good thing to light a fire in the woodstove.
I brace myself to go out to the chilly porch. There in the woodbox on the porch are broken twigs and branches gathered the other day after the ice storm. There, too, is another log. I carry them inside to the woodstove in the living room, where I begin the ritual of emptying the ashbox under the stove. I sweep up the spilled ash, then crumple newspaper and lay it next to the big partly-burned log lying cold in the stove. I add tinder and kindling, and the other log, and strike the match. It is such a joy to light a fire, and to be with it. It's such a true, deep amazement to participate in the flame dance-paintings. Oh, my Heart.
A simple life, and solitude enough to satisfy the soul for now, mixed in with laughter and service and tired feet in my library job. Tomorrow the earliest returning songbirds will wake me, calling from the big old spruces and sugar maples just outside. The snow is melting, the soil is warming. Soon my other job, keeping the shop gardens downtown, will start up again. Two part-time jobs in public places, for a person who has truly learned to enjoy her solitude. A marriage of opposites inside. A benefit of viewpoints. A successful friendship with my self.
In the front room windows, begonias bloom bright pink all winter long. They bloom whether it's sunny or cloudy outside; they bloom whether it's day or night. They are my love-beacons, and my child-heart happy-song. In the aquarium in the living room, two goldfish chase each other and take turns hiding in a small rock cave. In the back room my sewing machine is waiting for its next project: patchwork wedding pillows for two sets of young people. And in my sense of How It Is and How It Can Be, one thing stands out free and clear: the simple goodness is my home vibration. All are welcome, yet none intrude. Home.
Always, after all these years of wandering, always at the back of my mind is the thought that this particular goodness of staying in one place, being a citizen in this village, being a neighbor and a chorus member - all those things I took for granted before my wanderings - always I notice there's a concern that I'll be whooshed away, out on the road again, ready-or-not. But then I remember: I learned how to find home wherever I was, whatever the work the universe set before me. I know home. I am home. It's all right.