I have crossed the wobbly bridge of in-betweenness, but I have not yet found my footing here at home. Everything seems strange, and I am separate from it. I have wandered in mist and cloud, watched the rain splash into the pond, felt the pillowy bolster of soft sycamore leaves beneath my feet, and tried to still my thoughts.
I miss my little family in England. I miss the walk on sidewalks from blue door to blue door, the tumble of toys and noise and tension and tenderness in my daughter’s house, the newborn baby in my lap, the boisterous, brilliant boy. I miss the gentleness, the muffling that distance gave, yielding to brief forgetting of what was happening back home across the sea, focusing on the immediacy of love.
Sometimes this ranch is an island apart from the world, a place of comfort and peace. Now everything seems at risk, and it is futile to hide. Our country is on a dangerous path, and I don’t want to devote my writing space entirely to this, but it is the undeniable backdrop, and each of us must figure out how we are going to navigate, help make things right, endure and prevail.