We are the magic that makes a home
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- July 9, 2023
- 1018
I find myself getting lost in the blossoms of my garden, their singular beauty emerging for a season, then back to sleep until next year. I think of myself this way sometimes, productive for a season, then retreating into my shell. I can’t seem to get through this spell of discontent, a restlessness for which there is no name.
I write this on July 4, knowing we will visit the grandkids in their new house and play with some sparklers in the dark. Maybe I’ll write my name in the night sky and watch it fade, the outlines of it remaining even though the fire is gone. Sparklers burn bright but quickly die out when they reach their end. I might be a sparkler, meant to twinkle under a hot July night once a year.
Maybe that’s enough.
Sometimes I look in the mirror and brush a hand across my face, under my eyes, my chin. I love myself completely but feel the creep of unfinished things, of dreams deterred. Each day passes and with it an anxious awareness that time has an end — that I must hurry. I question what I thought were things I wanted to accomplish and turn them over in my palm, pondering, probing. I wish I could say I was the person who was content to work the same job for 35 years, then retire. I admire those people and the roots they are faithful to, but am bound to my wild soul, the one that says go and fly.
A friend shared a quote on her IG story last week, and it described me down to my littlest toenail, “She was an adventurer at heart, but oh how she loved to be home.” I do love to be home, to putter, to fuss, to lay on my couch and count the knots in the wood ceiling above me. But what’s pushing me out is that restlessness, that knowing that the next thing is here, don’t be afraid. We can make ourselves sick by not listening to our gut, the little voice that lives in your conscience. Some say that’s God, but I know full well we can know what the right thing is for us. He gave us that ability.
It’s when we don’t listen to ourselves that we get in trouble, becoming restless, making ourselves sick over things we need to get off the couch to do.
We’re going to eat hot dogs tonight before we light up the sparklers, a cold beer with a juicy green lime, maybe some chocolate no-bake cookies. This world makes me dizzy with its delights: the plump cheeks of a baby, sticky hugs from a toddler, an unforeseen kiss from a partner, the dewy spiderwebs I walked through in my garden this morning. I planted very large black pots with supertunias, and they have become so large and beautiful it makes me cry. I’ve never grown anything that big in a container before, and some days I simply sit and look at them. They don’t have to prove anything, just continue to grow.
I think many of us get lost in our own cares, the decisions we need to make. It might seem I have much I’m thinking about, but then again, I write about it every week and you get to read it. Before that, I kept it inside or let it bleed out into the books of written poetry that sit on my writing table. I warned my kids that when I’m gone, don’t be surprised at what you find written in those books — to steel yourselves for the reality of Mom/Missy you never saw. I think showing emotion is a good thing. Holding it inside is worse, says one of my good friends who is a therapist. I’m working on letting it out and making bold decisions.
I told George this morning that my garden may hold secret pathways and lush blooms, but no matter where we are, the ability to make any space our own lies inside us. We are what makes it home.