coming home

They say you can never come home. Depends on how you define "home". I've had many homes in my lifetime and some were harder to come back to than others. 

My home now is the convent. But that's not exactly accurate... my home now is a group of women who have chosen a life that's off the beaten path... a much simpler way of living than what I've found on this vacation. 

Specifically I'm referring to the act of living and moving and being in a complicated world. My world now is way less complicated than it was before, not just in not having to decide what to wear in the morning, but in the intangible emotional choices. 

I find I can no longer hold together the various strands of subtle innuendos and personality quirks, hostile grudges from past wounds, constant struggles to carry (and manage) the baggage of childhood. I say the wrong things in the wrong places. (Well, actually that's not new for me.) But it's different now, because for the most part, it's unwillingly and unwittingly done. 

The women I live with have quirks in their personalities, of course. But we are more transparent. In the convent there's no need to posture or impress, no need for lots of words to describe the indescribable... and as a result, there's no need to posture or impress the outside world either.

So, for the most part, I have little or nothing to say. Except when I open my mouth to make an observation... and experience the backlash that it was the wrong thing at the wrong place and the wrong time. Then I'm awash in guilt for not knowing better, not remembering some topic was taboo ground, not discerning that one person needs assurance, while another needs to hear a truth nobody else will tell them. It's a complicated world and I no longer live in it.

So... I'm at the airport, waiting for my flight to my less complicated world. They have free wireless in this airport, and I'm taking advantage of the novelty of being plugged into my email (and the internet) in a public place. I've just experienced a hectic week of wedding preparations... parties and receptions and rehearsal dinners, the wedding itself, and the reception and another party yesterday. Each individual event was carefully planned and lovingly executed, the bride and groom are delightful people with a wonderful array of friends and family. But when you put all those events and people together, it was exhausting. 

This coming week I'll be doing some of it all over again as my sisters and I prepare for another Life Profession next Saturday. Not so many parties, but certainly the excitement of the preparations will be the same. They've just announced my flight has been delayed another hour. More time to enjoy the novelty of free internet and airport cuisine.