My dear friend is here for a couple of days and we've been having fun chatting a mile a minute and wandering around. Yesterday we were further afield, so the car was necessary, and wherever I parked, I was about two feet from the curb. It took me three or four tries each and every time. Some days are like that. You just can't get snug to the curb, and you're being constantly pulled away from your destination and safe anchor. I wonder if I was literally of two minds yesterday - one to keep moving and one to stand still. I think it's all part of my disorientation since I returned from my trip.
But if I look back on my life so far, I see these two minds - the mind that married a person from a different culture and lived on the other side of the world - and the person that circled my home state and parents and what I knew. And since my family lived on both coasts and in between, I think the homing instinct for home and the wandering instinct to see the new and different are ingrained in me. Our kids all have it too. They get restless if they aren't traveling, and restless to be home again when they are. Most people are trying to get both sides of themselves to function in tandem, but the pull is there all of the time no matter what your position.
That is the tension of life. The longing and quest, and the honing in of what feels like home. We're all on an invisible tightrope, and some days, like yesterday, it becomes visible.
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