Ponderings on Individuals. Families and homes.

Saturday we came home.
What a great feeling: arriving home after being away for 7 days.

We were in the midwest. Chicago and then Brown County, Indiana for a family reunion.
And now, we are home.

Yes, I keep typing the word home because I just spent 3 days with a lot of family.  Most of whom call home somewhere in the midwest.  In fact, almost all of them live withing 4 hours of our gathering point in Brown County, Indiana.  Strangely, at one point in the week on of my relatives was complaining that her child lives 8 hours away.  As for me, I had very little sympathy for her cause.

Because I am home, out here.  I am home now among Puget Sound. Among large Western Red Cedars and Fir trees. I am home in the dry summers and the very wet fall, winter and springs.  I am home in this house that Sean and I are buying together and raising our children in.

Claiming a home, and making a home in a new place though doesn't mean that there isn't loss.  I feel sad that thunderstorms are more a memory than a reality.  I ache for more cousin time for my children. I long for the ease of running into family or having more casual gatherings. I wish I could be around people who knew my Dad and who have his arms, knees, toes, style of language etc.

 But alas, that's not the life I am choosing.  Whatever choices I make  there will be loss.

I had a terrible conversation with another relative about my perspective on homosexuality.  The frustrating part was the he brought it up.  He came and talked to me, and then wasn't interested in listening at all. I don't even know why he came to me an initated a conversation.  In the end it was at best meaningless, at worst really really painful.  The pain was not about disagreeing with me, I am fine with disagreement.  It was the way he used religion as a club...to try to beat down my own thinking (which is of course also very religious so it didn't work).

Wow, what a reminder that there are places in the world, in my home of origin, and even in my family where all of me is not really welcome.  I guess that is true with everyone though, we keep some things at bay, bring some things forward in the right time and places...

I read some quippy thing on pintrest the other day that said, "every family has a black sheep, if you don't know who it is then it is you."   I think that it is me.  Not that people are ashamed of me, but they like me better from a distance.  I might make people uncomfortable, or bring up tensions, or remind folks that we are not all exactly the same.  And that is scary in a family that avoids conflict like the plague. I know I am loved, by many people in my family.  I am not sure however, that I am known (well) by many of those people.  

So yes. I am home now.  And I have a lot of sad feelings about the reunion being over, vacation being over, family time being over.

But I am here. In my home. I am known here.  I am known too, in a different way at a family reunion.  Known in a different way by my siblings. Or by my Mom.  Each of those people who some part of who I am.  But the place that is most fully me. . . is right here.


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