It takes time to feel home

This lovely purple lady here is such a beautiful mirror sometimes to all that moves around myself. The day I got back home she was all flowers and smiles. I take this conversation quite seriously too. The feelings were mutual and was stoked to see her in bloom.What a gorgeous welcome.

I do not have a dog(yet), so I can get moved by the friendships I make with my plants. I like to check in with them, see if they got sad, see if they got watered properly, or too much, see if there are any dry leaves, do a little trimming, chat them up and clean their leaves.

I was smiling to be back home.I was absorbing all the corners with a new born curiosity feelings.

Yes,I was still distant.

I can see only now few weeks in, how remote my own sensors were. Observing everything more as if there were some surprising movie scenes. I wonder now if you might live through similar perception changes when you take a vacation and return to your base couple of weeks later.

I would argue also that it is a matter of how many weeks that might be as well.

I would also argue that my methods of returning back to my home fully, got also slower motion too. Much slower than even couple years back. I never rush to empty my luggages. I try here and there but I can live with an open luggage for days.It feels as if I am still on vacation in a way.

I take a lot of time in placing things in order, placing things in their original place. Luckily I would not share photos about this process with you but even these couple of weeks later, I still leave things in the middle of the corridor. There is no emergency. There is pretty much a dolce vita overpowering mood.

I am here. I recognise this place. I take ownership in living here. Is all a fact and yet I asked myself few times, where was I still wondering. Country sides, country roads? Airports? Yoga rooms? Museums? Baby playgrounds?

It is astonishing to notice that we can still be present in few places at the same time. Physically, only one place. Heart and mind still going back and forth between there and here.

I found myself zooming in an out too on things. Some carried some priority. Some were priority yet hard to achieve category - like overcoming jet lag. Some were a matter of beauty and how the beauty talked to me - so much closer, intimate. The little flowers you see here were so fragile. They vanish so quickly. Is not easy at all to catch a good glimpse of one. And I must have starred and talked to these few minutes. Zooming in on these flowers and their fragile life span just felt as a magic moment.

So good to be home,I whispered. This color looks good on yo,I winked.

Sure, there is a possibility that a reader might find this ridiculous in itself - yet, I call it a practice. A practice of acclimatisation sort of speak.An indulgence that I can afford.

We do develop our own methods of getting familiar again with what we used to know. It does not take that long when you look at it to sort of release some space on our internal hard-disk, be it thoughts, body or heart. Once we distanced, and we experienced something new. There it is also a spur of release.

A release from dominating thoughts. A release of issues strictly related to a logistics of a place. A release from knowing which road, which boat to take. A release in our memory of what we are habitually eating daily. A release from how much coffee we are drinking daily.

And this new space for me was very healing. Lack of sleep might bring a bit of pressure occasionally yet, with patience all resets itself. With patience and quite a lot of understanding I have offered myself this time.

I find even fascinating how little of a time it takes in some instances to remove in fact some of our “go to” habits. With one week of interruption only, my brain suddenly decided red meat is not of interest anymore. A simple practical example.

No targets here, no big decisions, no big announcements. I simply listen and adjust.

This simplicity mostly I find very healing. And freeing.

Today is a Sunday. My second weekend back home. I found myself this morning baking apples- a new thing I have when the autumn surprised us early this year. They smell delicios. And even if it was a pretty new habit I spoil myself with on the weekends, the simple act of “let me bake some apples” brought me suddenly home.

With that ,I then found myself chopping celery and making a mirepoix. Then checked the fridge and pulled or some veggies for a soup, some for a vegetables bake-tray. My hands just found back the utensils, the knives, the wooden board, the magic chef living here was coming back to old known ways. If is a Sunday, I better have a soul warming soup too.

It is not that I have not been cooking in the prior days. Not at all. I just felt it differently . And here I was, literally delighting myself in the simplest soup ever, cauliflower and zucchini with a touch of lime juice ( and a slightly burned mirepoix base!)- and saying to myself, pardon me, outloud:” Well that was amazing! So good. We are back in business”.

The business of coming back home in full.

Thank you……….and you are all invited to the home made soup, by the way.