washwords

Too cheesy to say “where the heart is” ?

Probably. But it’s true.

I’ve been thinking a lot about home lately. Not just because Nablopomo told me to think about it – it’s their theme for June, but ABOUT home. About where it is, how you know it, how you hold onto it, how you move to be sheltered by it when it shifts.

It started with a trip home. Well, to the home where I grew up, the town I grew up. “my hometown…. this is myyy home town…” It was a trip to take my boyfriend “home.” So where you grow up? That must be home.

On that trip, I went literally home, back to the source, to THE home, the physical home where I grew up; the home, serendipitously enough, that one of my very bestest friends in the 3rd, 4th, 5th grades had just purchased… with her husband…. and baby.

It filled me with joy. Here was the home where she and I had played. She could teach her son that the evergreen tree was hollow inside if you poked in just the right way, that the basement cabinets made an excellent clubhouse, that the spot to the left of the staircase was perfect for spying on whoever was below.

V had been there when my dad passed the rule “no more dr. scholls.” Too many girls were getting the think wooden heels of those monstrosities stuck on our thin deck and being catapulted into the backyard! She was there for birthday parties, scavenger hunts, t ball games and trips to ground round for sundaes in baseball caps.

I couldn’t wait to see it.

But I also was afraid. This was the home where my father, and my memories of him, lived. And it was the home where he died, making the brightest and Read the rest of this entry »

It’s National Police Week, which means Judiciary Square, and its Fallen Officer Memorial are glorious. I don’t have a particular connection to police officers but I do have a connection to this place and the painful beauty it reverberates in memory, in mourning but in celebration for lives lost too soon. These were the true good guys – you can see all over the faces of those they left behind, who come to remember.

Judiciary Square, this memorial in particular, are always gorgeous: the squared off green of the lush, full trees; the majestic cool of the stone lions, the waves of names that roll on and on with stories and Read the rest of this entry »