Monday, June 27, 2011

Leaving Home


In a few hours, I will board a Texas-bound train in St. Louis.  For more than a month I have been enjoying some time in my first and longest home. I'm not particularly sentimental about Indiana, but I do love the house I grew up in, and after five years in Texas, I love a place where the rains fall heavy in June.  Since I first left home for college, sharing this place with friends has been one of my quietest joys. If you were here, we would work at the dining room table, then go for a walk under the old trees, and end our day on the porch together. This is a good place. This is home.




A place where words are gathered and sent with care.


A place where someone brings me flowers as I work.
A place with room for friends.


A place where naps are encouraged.

A place we pray.


A place I must leave.
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3 comments:

  1. LindsayJune 27, 2011 at 3:35 PM

    I love your Indiana home and the people who live (and have lived) there, as well. :)

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  2. lastwordsmithJune 28, 2011 at 12:08 PM

    Having grown up in the Midwest myself, I certainly understand the reluctance to leave. I never quite realize how alienated I am from my current, coastal-South landscape until I stand in the middle of a farmhouse lawn, look across the farmland dotted with trees and barns, and think "yes, this is my country, and the land that made me." It would be going a bit far to say I now live in exile, though there are days when it feels like "By the rivers of South Alabama we sat down and wept. / We hung our harps upon the pines."

    But there's a bright side to leaving home. Until I set up my own home, there was only one "Schuler House," with all the warmth, hospitality, and cheer that phrase implies to the people who know it. Now there are two. It's so gratifying when guests in my house say the same things about it that I have heard old guests say about my parents' house.

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  3. BethanyJuly 1, 2011 at 11:35 AM

    That is a very bright side, indeed. If we must leave home, thank goodness we can transplant the good things about those homes with us. In fact, I think much of our being "at home" in this world relies on obedience to the command that we plant gardens in Babylon.

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