Home

Why on God's good earth did it take me until I was sixty years old to find "home"?

Being a kid in Massachusetts felt right to me but then my father went on the fast track with Shell Oil and that made us nomads, picking up and wandering every couple three years 'till graduation from MSU when marriage, then, grounded me for good-and-nearly-ever in Detroit and environs.

I was always a fish out of water there.

I remember the first weekend after Tom and I moved into married housing at State I asked him if we could "go for a ride" on Sunday.

"A ride," he asked, incredulous?

"Yes. You know, just get in the car and see where it takes us," I answered naively.

The look on his face totally told me he had no concept of what I meant. "We can just drive till we find an historic spot and explore it," I said.

"Judy, the only historic thing around here is the expressway???"

I was flabbergasted. In Massachusetts my dad took us all for a ride almost every Sunday and, there, you couldn't throw a dead cat but you'd happen onto a historic marker of some ilk!?

I should have known right then; I should have advocated more strongly for relocation after graduation. But I didn't. I was a dutiful wife and wanted my husband to be happy so Detroit was where we landed. We were happy there, love will find a way, but - oh - in retrospect, how much lovlier it would have been to spend our time together somewhere else. Somewhere pretty with lots of sunshine and blue skies and warm breezes. Somewhere with palm trees and a white sand beach.

Somewhere you could take a ride....

My plane landed this morning in Tampa about 9:30 on my return from Active Duty with the grands in Berkley and Grosse Pointe, Michigan. From the moment I stepped out of the terminal I felt like I was home: the sun, the breeze, Tampa Bay so blue and welcoming, pelicans swooping by us on the Howard Franklin and the Sunshine Skyway bridges. Even the hugh outlet mall in Ellenton called my name as we flew past heading south on I-75.

By the time we got to Clark Road in Sarasota my whole body breathed a sigh of relief.
It was a really RAGGED sigh because the asthma I brought back with me as a parting gift from the State of Michigan persists but I don't even care. Tomorrow I'll see darling darling Doctor Eva Berkes and she'll help me get rid of it, I'm sure.

Coming into our driveway tears got in my eyes reminding me that even paradise is imperfect here on earth but, Lord, how thankful I am to be in this space.

I'm home.