The Forsythia Bush brings a burst of color to the greens and browns of the gravel tracing foliage. The arrival of spring has brought restored excitement to our family like the idea of the move created this time last spring. Now, the sun falls later and the chill crisp of winter is no longer frigid with dry wind. What we have been waiting for has arrived. With the expectancy I have carried slowly fading like the shivering “love you, see you soon”s shared on the stoop of my front porch, I now gaze at the stars and take all the time I like to say goodbye.I can laugh at the moon instead of running back into the light of the fire inside my house and the moon seems to laugh back. It humors me as if knowing how ironic it is that all is well–as if it is a secret. But the much needed arrival if warmer weather changes nonetheless and the purity of my first spring at my new home brings the glory of change in different ways of past seasons. While here there are no cherry blossoms tinting the driveway with a sticky brown residue, the pungent scent of Bradford pear blossoms cascade off my car as I drive East towards my life but away from my new home. The distance between the beautiful place I am getting to know introduces a strange duplicity to my life. I am beginning to recognize that boxes do not have to be sealed with clear packing tape and labeled “new house” or “funny friend” or “artsy girl.” The duality of my life in Oak Ridge and in Greensboro opens my eyes to the place in my heart I hold for both. And while I may not hear the same shitty mustang backfire down Friendly that Evan does, and text her at the ridiculosity of it all, she too is in a new home and so therefore the newness of it all can be shared. It can be refreshing. As I sit with my coffee on my back porch, I watch as a storm embraces my home. While it seems rather cliche, and almost boring to write about my sense of place not about the nights I spent in Denali National forest or hiking the Appalachian Trail but in my backyard, I have learned so much here about belonging and awareness. I know the feeling of the grass underneath my feet and how the cat climbs the dogwood tree and my dark barks in delight at the fireflies that swarm our little white cottage. The rain dotting our unkept lawn with fresh food for the henbit, a blue jay chases a robin up through a spruce tree. The purple my eye captures speaks to me. Above all the movement and madness, Alice Walker tells me that the purple I see in nature is God. And there is plenty of God in my new place. The stillness this wisdom brings grants me more clarity as to why I may inhabit this place and all of the life it brings. I trudge into the wet mud and pick up a fallen rhododendron blossom. As I walk back to my porch I smile a little, because the discomfort I feel now–my new discomfort: wet hair, muddy feet, and cherry laurel flakes on my sweatshirt–is a choice. For a lot of reasons this place is incredibly freeing to the close mindedness I possessed and was trying to deny. I inhale the humid scent of rain and exhale the day’s worries. I have no need to fear because now, I belong. My sister calls me to plant some begonias. Yes, this where I need to be.
