Going Home Again

You can go home again, apparently, because I've done it.  I came to my parents house in Pennsylvania in June for an extended visit (extended meaning--to me--about two months) and I'm still here.  Events have been conspiring against me (or with me--I'm still not sure) to keep me here.  Almost as soon as I got here both my mom and my dad were diagnosed with cancer.  My dad's is a slow growing cancer of the prostate which only needs to be watched at this point.  My mom has cancer in both breasts and she has opted for chemo followed by surgery.  All of that has been put off until after my mom and dad go to Ireland for a week next month.  Meanwhile Mom is taking what amounts to mini-chemo in a pill.  My gut sense is that she doesn't have an aggressive form of cancer and will be just fine, but I will be sticking around to see how the chemo goes next month.  And as if all of this weren't enough, in the past two weeks my mom managed to amputate part of her index finger.  *Sigh.*

So I am here in Pennsylvania after a fourteen year absence (aside from a few very short visits) and back in my home town after a twenty-four year absence.  In other words it's the first substantial amount of time I've spent here since I left when I was seventeen.  And wow what a time I'm having!  I've stated previously on this blog that I believe human potential is tied to the land and that place holds potential.  Much as we pretend to be creatures divorced from the land we're really created by the environment that surrounds us.  So it's been a fascinating journey to revisit the landscape that created me.

I'm going to get into all of this in more detail in my next few posts, but for today I just need to ease back into writing.  For some reason I haven't been able to write at all this year.  It's like I can't string two sentences together, can't form coherent paragraphs.  Instead of fighting it I've taken it as a sign that something else is needed, some other way of making sense of the world, something other than words--and so I've written next to nothing all year.  But I think I feel a shift happening now and perhaps I'll be able to string some posts together in the next few days and weeks.  I miss blogging.

Here's a photo of me with all of my siblings and my parents, taken over the 4th of July weekend.  I'm the one on the left.

From Where Simplicity Leads