Coming Home

This lodestone of longing, this certainty, drew him to lead his companions ever westward through wild and unknown country, as unerringly as a carrier pigeon released from an alien loft.
                                                               from The Incredible Journey
                                                                         by Sheila Burnford     
        When I was six years old, my family moved to a “new” house in a “better” neighborhood. We moved because we could. I’m sure my parents made the move to give us kids more opportunities, educationally and socially.
       The saying “bloom where you are planted” only goes so far. Sometimes, I think, we have a sense of where we belong. Sometimes we need to move household and family to get there. 
       Sometimes we just need to find safety in a world full of danger. 
       When she was in her early twenty’s, my great-grandmother moved to a “new” country where she did not know the language, the customs, or even how the money worked. She moved with my then three-year-old grandmother. She moved to give her daughter more opportunities, with the added dimension of escaping persecution.  
       As I think of all the people who are displaced, uprooted, unsettled, in a dangerous place, moving to an unwelcoming “new” place, I pause to thank my courageous great-grandmother who traveled across an ocean to find her daughter a better home. I pause to thank the welcoming people she found here, people who helped her thrive and who helped my grandmother thrive.
                                                                   --stay curious!