Home, away from.

In 22 days, after more than a year of waiting, waiting, waiting for departure, I take the flight.

For so long now, I have lived as a reluctant nomad without ever stepping foot on foreign soil.  From the moment I chose her, I knew I was also choosing culture adaptation, mosquito nets, vaccination after vaccination, the French language, flights across the oceans separating me from my family and my home.  I was choosing Benin--her first post assignment as a foreign service officer.  Sometimes the fear of the foreign is writhing in my body; almost always, it is writhing in my will.  I don't know how to be nomadic ("unsettled" is its synonym) externally without feeling nomadic internally.

But I know I am not called to stay in reluctance but to accept, with self compassion, the transition from winter to amaranthine summer.  And when I step off that plane, my feet sinking into the earth, into the fear, I'm going to remember home is not here; home is not there.  Home is the Abercrombie/cigarette scent of his Honda, the drives he and I took across the highway of our shared, broken memories, my daddy's outstretched arms, the lingering in my fingertips during Schumann's Traumerei, the needle in my mother's hand stitching patterns she can undo, the choking of her voice in front of two witnesses, the feel of my feet landing on pine and dampness during a solitary run.  

Home is in me.