Home is Where the Heart is?

Home.

?If ‘home’ means ‘residence’ I’ve lived a wonderfully varied life.

750 Mainstreet is my current residence ….A lofty loft. Most recently it was 309 West Wayside Road in a beautiful neighborhood called Hobby Acres. Before that it was a sparsely appointed Westside Village two-bedroom apartment in Hopkins.

One time our address was a Post Office box and so as vagabonds we lived different places and I said ,  ”Home is where my suitcase is.” That is as close to ‘homeless’ as I got.

We lived in three different apartments in Akademgorodok, Russia; two different ones on Zolotodayska and one on Uluysa Tereshkovoy.

Strangers in a strange land.

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may              roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like                  home.

I’ve never lost a home to flood, tornado, earthquake, tsunami, or fire.
I’ve never had a home torn apart by drugs, alcohol,  or abuse.
I’ve had a place for happy memories  and tradition.
So, for me home is a refuge….a shelter in the time of storm.

I want to go there.

But now because of this worldwide threat, we’re commanded to go home. Millions of us. What if home isn’t, or isn’t a safe haven?  What if I don’t want to dwell there all the time?  Well, that’s something to think about.  Maybe I’m seeing a more  of  symbolic meaning of the word. In this perilous time, I’m being asked to see anew another view of home.

 Catherine (Kitty) O’Meara retired teacher in Wisconsin who was trying to make some sense of our current world pandemic wrote this poem;

“And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and grew gardens full of fresh food, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayEed, some danced.  Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently

And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they themselves had been healed.”

May it be so. Let’s go home.

‘and the people stayed home’.  March 2020. Catherine (Kitty) O’Meara                     https:// http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/irish-american-teachers-poem-covid19-outbreak