Ozark Oddments: Goin' home with a smile and a sniffle

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Goin' home with a smile and a sniffle

Anyone who has seen the documentary film that was made of the Woodstock event will probably remember the wild grimaces and facial contortions of Alvin Lee, the lead singer of the band 10 Years After as he wailed about "goin' home..."

I suppose there are as many ideas of what home is and what home means as there are people to think about it, and emotions to run the gamut as well.

Home is where you hang your hat.
Home is where the heart is.

Yesterday, a woman in the window seat said to the man in the middle seat...

Home is where the husband is.

Last Tuesday I went home.... home to the house where I spent about half my life before I got married, home to my mother and father. Home to where my heart is. Yesterday I came home. Home to the house where I have lived since 1981, home to my husband and family. Home to where my heart is.

I smiled a little and cried a little both coming and going. Smiling at wonderful memories, crying a bit because my mom may die soon, and this visit may have been the last time I see her alive on this earth. It is a bit hard to write about it.

Today I am pleased to be sitting in front of my window, happy to have made the connections for three different flights starting with Santa Ana-John Wayne Airport in Orange County at 5:30 am... to Denver.... to Dallas/Ft Worth... and ending in Springfield at 7 p.m. last night. Not everybody who traveled yesterday was so fortunate. Whew...

I will shortly launch myself into untangling the snarl on my laptop. I was not able to give my various bosses any advance notice that I needed to take time off so I did have to take my work with me - which actually worked out OK. Now I will see if I can persuade all those files to come and live on this computer.

And as soon as Richard comes back from his dental appointment and we receive the new refrigerator we bought earlier in the month - just doing our part to stimulate the economy a bit, doncha know - and transfer everything into it, he will download the photos I took, and life goes on....

2 comments:

Wanda..... said...: My mother's death 2 years ago in June is still raw for me...Yesterday I came across a photo of her on the computer...one I was unaware of...turns out it was the last photo I had taken of her...and it was only by chance...I had taken a distant shot of my house and after enlarging it...there she was on the porch...I could almost see her soul on her face...she died a month later.
I'm sorry for this point in your own mother's life...Your post touched me deeply.; 11:47 AM
Cloudia said...: Delicious borsht today!
Ah, going home...
God bless you....and your mom.

Aloha-

Comfort Spiral; 8:08 PM

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Thoughts to ponder

Most of us go through life so absorbed in the cocoon of ourselves that we rarely stop to consider the other. Of course, we think that we do; indeed, we may pride ourselves on our capacity for empathy; we may be considerate and thoughtful in our dealings with others, but how often do we stand before them. so to speak, and experience what it is to be them?--Domenica Macdonald

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, by Alexander McCall
Smith

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Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering -- because you can't take it in all at once. --Audrey Hepburn

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I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.--Agatha Christie

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Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.--Katharine Hepburn

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One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

"Two people... told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is. I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities. I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thoughness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of "how those Christians love one another"?--Madeline L'Engle, "A Circle of Quiet"