Going Home

I ready myself for a month long journey home. In two weeks I take Jonah to Scotland, and to England for the first time since Grandpa passed. I haven’t seen Granny or the Yorkshire lands for about a year and a half, and God knows I feel it deeply. I’m aching to sit by Grandpa’s cairn, add a stone, to speak to the earth about him for a while up on that hill under the great oak tree. I want to hear the drawing of the curtains in the dining room as all goes quiet and dark for the evening, with just the odd sheep bleating in the night. I want to sit by the old clock and listen to its chime to me all of it’s vast and simple memories that make my throat hurt just a little now. I wonder if I’ll struggle this time – I’m so weak in the face of memory – I could sit underneath nostalgia’s brooding wing for many hours. Perhaps what I am realizing as I write this (and become overwhelmed with emotion whilst doing so) – is that I am homesick. The earth of the dark Island has a hold on you – it’s something deep and unutterable. Perhaps that’s why it’s seen as such a magical place full of faeries and sprites, druids and strange stones, because there is a hum underneath that green grassy ground that draws your soul for all your days no matter where you may be in the world.

It’s been years since I’ve been home when it hasn’t been winter too – even in winter everything managed to stay luminous green on the ground, but I think I shall be nearly blinded by the color this time. North Carolina can be said to be green, but it’s brown and faded in comparison to Scotland in the Spring.

I’ll set Jonah free to run on the land and wonder if it will change him as it does me. I think he will be breathing fresher air, and running wilder and freer, and that makes me joyous. I think God has great things in store for us as we go away for a while – i think some new breath will blow.