At Home

Yesterday, Mr. Moon and I went out for a walk and headed down to the creek to see what the past few days' rain had brought. The last time we'd been out there, a week ago, the water was running low in the banks and we'd had a wonderful time, following the lazy moving water through the woods and down to Highway 59.

This week we didn't have the time we'd had the week before so we didn't spend too much time following the creek, but it's impossible not to wend your way beside it for a little distance, at least. There are cypress trees and the high white sand banks, the oak and pine in the woods around it, the deep hollows which I suppose were sink holes, and such sweet silence except for the birds and the sound the water makes as it rushes over fallen logs.

"We're lost again!" I always tragically announce as we walk, but of course we never are although it feels as if we might be, but in an enchanted, fairy-tale way, not a real, actual way.

The whole experience feels enchanted with the silence and the trees and the slow-moving water. It's so beautiful and I love it.

As we walked home I told Mr. Moon that we should get us a little piece of that land and build a hut on it. "It wouldn't even need electricity," I said, "Just a tiny little place where we could sleep and build a fire."
"And what would you do there? Spend the weekend?"
"With you, I'd hope," I said and he laughed at me.

But I think it would be great to have such a place. I love my house tremendously but there's something so compelling about the idea of a small, snug place to lay my head, to cook a simple meal.

I've lived in so many places. I've lived in a ten by fifty foot trailer and it made a fine and cozy place to live with two children and a husband although I did constantly dream that I found new rooms I'd never known about and was always a bit sad when I'd wake up to discover that no, there were no unexplored places in the trailer. I've lived in a very old shack which had no running water and it was cold in the winter and like an oven in the summer but I loved its wooden walls, its tilting floors. I've lived in a big, solid, brick Colonial house with a pool, too, and I never felt at home there, never could sleep there, although I appreciated it for everything it was.

Of course the place I live now is my dream home and I still pinch myself sometimes to think that yes, this is my bed in this house, this is my kitchen, these are my floors and walls and porches. At least for now.

My son is longing for a house of his own. He lives in a funky, red brick apartment on Monroe street and he likes his apartment fine, but he recently found a house for sale that he is lusting after. It's small, but far larger than his apartment and was built in 1938 by the man who lived there until now and it's got some great built-in cabinets and a breakfast nook with a mosaic-tiled table and the original woodstove is still in the kitchen.

I understand why he'd want that house, as small and in need of fixing up as it is.

We all want our own hut, our own snug and cozy place to come home to at night, to keep our stuff in, to lay our heads down in, to cook our meals in.

Mr. Moon's cousin, whom he hasn't seen in about a million years, is staying in Tallahassee for a few days in her RV. She's spent two and a half years now, traveling solo around the USA in her "rig" as she calls it, and I have to give the woman her props. She's older than I am and brave enough to drive and park that thing, which is almost as big as the trailer I lived in with three other people. Sometimes she stays at RV campgrounds and sometimes she stays in Walmart parking lots and she seems sincerely happy to be living that sort of life. There's a romance to it, but it doesn't appeal to me. Thankfully, Mr. Moon is too tall to stand up in an RV, much less live in one, so he'll never drag me around the country in a metal and plastic box I'm expected to cook in, for which I am grateful.

I do love a nice motel or hotel room, though, and remember many that I have stayed in fondly, from the the very humble "tourist cabin" in Key West with the rattling AC in the window and the skittering lizards in the overgrown hibiscus and bougainvillea outside the door to the marble-floored two rooms and a balcony overlooking the Caribbean in Cozumel where we stayed several times. I always, always cried when we had to leave that place. It's a damn timeshare thing now so we'll never stay there again, but Lord, do I cherish the memories. Then again, I cherish the memories of another place on the island we stayed called La Pepita, with its paper-thin small green towels and the most uncomfortable toilet seat I ever had occasion to sit on. But there were singing cardinals in a cage in the courtyard there and the maids chattered to each other as they washed the sheets and towels by hand in that same courtyard and there were books to borrow in the small office where the keys were kept.
There was charm there, too, and I look back on it and it seems like enchanted days and nights.

There is joy in having your very own place where you live that you love, and there is joy in living (and maybe loving) for a few days and nights in a place you'll never see again, whether in a big city or on the side of a mountain, or beside a harbor where boats are docked. A place where no one knows you and where every view is a new one, every street or path takes you to a place you've never been before but where you can walk back down to your room and find your toothbrush and the book you're reading, the bed where you'll be sleeping, the ubiquitous TV and remote- a home away from home, the place to lay the head.

Dogs make dens and so do turtles and meerkats. Crabs have holes in the sand where they scuttle to when they feel threatened. Birds make nests and so do chimps, bending down the branches of tall trees to sleep in at night. Termites build mounds and ants do too, great cities of cooperation and industry where they live and work and feed their queens.

Humans live in huts and cabins and caves and houses made of everything from animal dung and dirt to marble to metal to buffalo hides. It is the nature of beasts everywhere to want a place to feel safe and protected from the elements and outside world. Our homes are our castles, whether they are made of stone or stick, and when we enter them, we can shed our watches, our shoes, our bras and our stress.

We are at home.

Some people have a lot of homes and I don't think I'd like that. I wouldn't want to be Oprah and have houses everywhere. That's way too much trouble and way too much work. Does she take her pillow with her whenever she changes domiciles? And how does she decide where to stay and when? I couldn't be bothered with all of that.

But a hut on the creek? Now that would be fine for a weekend here and there. I could pack my pillow (I do take it everywhere I stay) and a can of hash and a few eggs and some water and walk there, hopefully with Mr. Moon by my side. It would be a sweet little other-home if he were with me because the bottom line is, home is where the heart is, and where he is, there's my heart. And I guess that's what it all boils down to for me.

I'd even travel the country in an RV if that's what he really wanted to do. I guess.

Meanwhile, here we are, in this place, this dream home, and my heart is happy and it's almost as good thinking about that dream cabin in the woods as it would be to have it. I can see us sitting outside, drowsy in the sun, listening to the birds and the water and being quiet enough that a deer might amble by.

Perhaps in a parallel universe we are there right now and perhaps, it is nap time.

Sweet dreams. Sweet little dreams.