Almost Home

Have you ever heard of a little village called Fair Play, South Carolina?  Have you ever been there?  We spent last night in Fair Play.  I’m sure we’ve passed by the sign  “Fair Play” while traveling on I-85 before, but I never noticed it. Fair Play—what a neat name.  I wonder who decided on that name and why.  I will have to do some research.

Our month-long journey across country and back has been a good one packed full of new sights and insights.   Today we will travel north into North Carolina where on Saturday we’ll visit with our grandson Matthew and his wife Emily and their two-year old daughter (our first, and at the present moment, our only, great granddaughter) Addison.  We are already excited just thinking about being with them  The visit will be a wonderful way to close out our journey of nearly 8000 miles.  If all goes well, we should be home on Sunday evening.

Home?  I feel I am at home even while on the road.  Home for me is no longer a house, a place, a town, a setting.  My home is within me.  Maya Angelou wrote, “The ache of home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”  It is in this sense that I’ve been “home” all along the way.  But I read or heard somewhere that you really can’t travel without having a home some place, some where.  If there is no home to leave and return to, then traveling in and of itself is simply wandering, a state of being lost.  It is only when one returns home and settles in that one can reflect on the growth and experiences that occurred away from home. 

I’m still inclined to say that I am at home while on the road.  “We see the world piece by piece,” writes Emerson, “as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.”  Perhaps I’m beginning to see in these later years that all things are connected—that all is of one piece—the soul (or home)?  The old adage, “Home is where the heart is,” may be truer than we know.