Magic

There's been this ongoing theme to my life...a theme of uncertainty and slightly whimsical disregard for a final story to be written out as the pattern for what my life should look like. I have ideas and they change. I see visions of what I might have outside of my kitchen window one day... but whether I actually have a kitchen window and what is outside of it never remains a constant or solid picture. Cityscapes morph into country sides which fade into farms and back around to industrial landscapes. Sometimes I am in an old barn with no walls and only lofts and beams to plot out the rough and fluid spaces within my home. Other times I am in a 100 year old home with original woodwork, fireplaces, and huge windows. Then , the appeal of a small and simple repurposed shipping crate sounds amazing, only to be followed by the idea that a hut in Africa wouldn't suck at all.

Rigidity is almost like a four letter word for me.. I have no idea what I will end up doing or where I will go. It could be Africa or New York, Ohio or Scotland. It sounds scattered and flighty, and in a way I suppose it is, but sometimes I wonder if it is just a way of protecting myself from disappointment. If I don't set anything in stone, when it washes away, I can just write something else down in its place. That doesn't mean my heart was never in it... it just means my heart has gotten really good at treading water and waiting for the tide to go back out again. It feels like it is drowning in the mean time, but it always finds solid ground eventually.

But does that mean I am anti-settled down? I don't think so. I think I always keep my options floating around in my head, but that any one of them could result in just as much happiness as the next. If I end up in a warehouse loft in New York, I will be no more or less able to feel at home as I would in a farmhouse in Ohio. I won't suddenly feel like I am too tied down and run away, or become bitter about all of the places I didn't get to live. I would, of course, be dead set on still having options in my life... they are the soil that dreams find sustenance within, after all. But I don't have a checklist of places I want to live that needs to be crossed off, with no sign of stopping in sight. I want to be able to go if I so choose and if my family so chooses... I want to be able to write our own story completely independent of what society and others think a family's story should look like.

Sometimes, the picture I see out of the window in my head surprises me. Sometimes... the place where I end up standing and the warmth I get from it is not what I ever thought it would be, and I love that about myself. The fact that I can get faced with what I would have said is not 'me' and welcome it, hug it, and accept that it might be a part of my world that just hadn't been given enough thought until now; that I have come to a place in life where I know there are no lines to color inside of when it comes to painting a picture of who I am... there is only an expansive canvas and shit tons of colors to mix and throw at it. Pink may not have been my color, but it could be. And not because someone said it should be... but because, why not?

Lately, the picture I have been seeing was a little surprising. It wasn't a loft apartment in New York or a big house upstate. It was a cozy house and a barn and land with chickens and gardens and love. It was hugs that felt like they encased me, and passion that knew no boundaries. It was bonfires and bike rides and kids and hound dogs. Naturally, a trip to save orphans and build houses for people in need here and there would be in the works... but the picture out of my window has been a sunset, apple trees, and a barn full of projects. It has been a place where a feeling of home and safety and music and laughter not only existed, but wrapped around us like big ass blankets.

Of course, I would want to jump out of planes still... I would still want to put a stripper pole somewhere so I could learn to dance on it, go out for sushi once in a while, hop a plane to the city, and spend exhilarating days or weeks saving the world. That is never going to go away no matter where I land long term. I am always going to be too big to fit in one box all of the time. But the place I come home to has been looking lately like one of creativity mixed with love and beauty... with beat up trucks and fast toys. And a lot of love.

That is the one thing that never changes when my vision or my story morphs... there will be love. The kind that makes you smile when you are 40 years into it and still think about them when you are away. The kind that you dance in the kitchen to, stay up all night fixing the cars in the barn with, and the kind where you are still you and they are still them and together everything just fits.

I read a few days ago that you can tell when someone loves someone because they look at them like they are magic. Nothing is ever trouble free, but I believe there is going to be someone with me, looking out of whatever window I end up with, that will think I am magic. THAT is not an option, it is a must.