08.19

I think of long ago home whenever I wade through lapping waves of tumbleweed overgrowth, when I graze my hand over the tall weeds I once mistook for flowers and picked for my mother. I am not afraid to push my nose against the itchy blooms, swallow up the sweet pollen and remember the days of my innocence. Smell the small white house misplaced in the middle of three cornfields while the cattails chase thoughts of farm dogs and speckled robin eggs—of sparklers on the fourth of July and a jar full of expired lightning bugs. I never meant to let them die. Sometimes the nights utter nothing but still salutations to the past and a quiet allowance for hope. The smells are perhaps the most consistent thing about living in the country.

But I left home to live in town, and only when I am not paying any attention whatsoever, does the sweet perfume of lazy summer drift in and steal me away to a place closer to where I already am—to where I already have been. Lost thought moments define the little girl inside of me, and only when I stop to watch the storm clouds wrestle and catch cold raindrops on my tongue, do I find her again.

Of course sometimes I wonder why she still exists.

They say that Ireland is composed of lush countryside—lush with the overwhelming color spectrum green. I am so scared to be more than one hour away from the comfort smells of growing up. It will take much more than an hour-long evening drive to make it back... Yet maybe even more so, I am actually terrified to love the sights and scents of this foreign place more than I do my home. I am afraid to let go. And although I awake to the call of adventure, it is shelter and memory and eventually finding a place to call “home,” that inspire me.

I sit here alone in emotional preparation—with the daunting feeling that accompanies the approaching four month situation of assimilation I am about to embrace. It is a harsh realization that I will be without those I love nestled close by. But it is too late to be kept here, and at the very moment I board that plane, may I already begin to meet characters that might add to my story; may I find both the desire and the means to accomplish more writing; may I quiet my heart once again before the Lord. Perhaps I am anticipating too much—perhaps not nearly enough at all. No matter how it is, nothing can hide that I simply do not know what this excursion holds. With so many expectations and not a single clue at all, I will greet the beauty of opportunity and hopefully grow myself into a person better able to love.

Counting down the days until August 19…