That fateful night in the hot tub, Head Chef’s eyes blinked and glistened with sadness stemming from recent losses and an older yearning I had seen many times before. He pined for Hawai`i and for the life he’d led when he lived here as a younger man, and he foresaw his unhappinesses resolved if only he could get back to this physical place.
I loved him as much then as I do today, so I said yes. After six some-odd years, I abandoned my well-practiced rejection and said, simply, “OK.” And we moved. What has followed has been heartache, harder work than I have ever known, isolation, and too few of the rewards he believed in.
And he believed in so many inevitable rewards. More relaxed work lives, bounteous gardens, and endless aloha were ours for the price of being here. Everything would be fine because we were here.
Since I had committed myself to him and this dream, I took up the faith along with him and prayed on my mat four times per day and chanted each evening as I clutched my beads. Work lives, gardens, aloha. Work lives, gardens, aloha.
But that’s the problem with faith. Belief doesn’t make it so. Trust doesn’t make truth. And while not necessarily Jones Town, this is not The Promised Land, either. Not my Promised Land, and sadly, not even his.
It’s time to go. I’ve been away from Home for too long. I miss It.
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3 comments:
I know how you feel about homes and looking for the right one. I support you and the Head Chef, no matter what, and hope you know that if home really is where the heart is, then my door is always open. :) - the twisted sister
Hey PC - I hope you guys find home soon. Going to a physical place often can't take you back to the emotional space you once experienced there... - Lots of love, Raccoon
A good friend once said to me, "Weather is not community." He was speaking of places like San Francisco and San Diego, where the weather could be lovely, but he did not, in spite of his best efforts in these places, experience community. I think of this often, because I've been living in a small town in the Pacific northwest for four years now and yes, this is the place where I have experienced 'community', even though the weather (36 inches of rain a year and never a day over 78 degrees) is rarely anyone's idea of fine.
I hope you find your community, fair weather or foul.
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