DREAMING OF HOME

I’ve reached the phase of tiredness when I just keep bursting into tears. Sammy says it’s like the old camp days. I feel like it’s much worse.

The thing is there’s nowhere to truly rest. The hotel room is cramped and grubby - it’s fine - just a bit inconvenient for life. Malcolm’s house, where Sammy is tied at least to the feeling of home, is currently a whirlwind of family and dogs, and everything moves fast there. Rest is difficult. Meanwhile our house, which has now been cleaned, still carries a lingering stench, and might do for some days. I’m there today, working, and at various points, expecting an electrician, a surveyor, and some cleaners to turn up. It’s quiet, but of course all the windows are open, and so it’s cold.

I miss my family home. That’s why it’s been popping up in my dreams. I walk around it sometimes, moving from room to room - hearing my sister singing along to Whitney Houston, or my Grandma watching an old western on her telly. The kitchen’s alive with steam from the pressure cooker and the kettle, and out in the garden, my Dad has upended his bike. The spokes click while he oils the chain.

Upstairs in my attic room, the green duvet of a child’s bed has Lego bricks strewn over it: a half-finished spaceship, a car built of out of castle-walls and airport control tower windows. There are posters on the wall. There are colourful books on the shelf. It’s all very familiar.

It’s no wonder I’m crying all the time. I’m homesick for something deeper than maybe I realised, and I have to find a way to journey in it. You know, some people really believe that God’s role in our lives is to fix all of our problems, and that as an omniscient, omnipotent creator who loves us, he’s tightly bound by his character to do exactly that. But it’s always seemed a little two-dimensional to me. Actually, all I really want is him to be with me, out here in the wild, on the road, in the valley. And that’s probably the real home I’ve been dreaming about.

We’re so tired, Sammy and I. I don’t know how we’re functioning. I definitely need to be more gracious and expend energy on kindness; I’ve been snappy. I’m not too proud of that.

At least today, I am actually able to be at home, even if it’s cold and stinky. I’m kind of hoping the road gets easier from here, but even if it doesn’t, Ecclesiastes is truer than ever when it says a cord of three strands is not easily broken.