I'm deep in the heart of Texas, it's only May and yet when I walk outdoors the warmth of the spring air hits me right in the face. Nice! It feels like where I grew up, and somehow that heat is comforting to me. After flying with Sarah and her three kids, on two flights, where - her bad and my good - I was 20 rows behind her napping while she handled fidgety little ones, then we landed and parted ways. She headed out with her little family to do the wrap-up of buying a home for them all. I climbed in the car with my DIL, Janae and we headed to watch my son play intra-mural basketball. Til 12:45 am Texas time. That would be 1:45 am Pittsburgh time. But they won, so it was worth it I think.

I haven't seen him play basketball in years, maybe six or seven, and that's after watching hundreds and hundreds of games while he was growing up. He still plays like a crazy person, but after three games last night he told me he hurt all over. At twenty-five he was limping around and tired today. Hard to deny they are growing up, and if he's sore at twenty-five, then what am I at almost 53 years old? What stage of life?

After oversleeping this morning, we all climbed into a car and went to meet with our realtor and spent a couple of hours looking at two homes. One, a woman lost her husband about a year ago and is ready to move closer to her adult children. The other, the family wants to move into town to have their kids nearer the private school they're enrolled in. I walked through homes, seeing photos on walls and dressers. One had shoes lined up outside the door, boxes of sugary cereal on top of the fridge, school lessons waiting to be finished, a busy home somewhat cluttered with the stuff of life. The other immaculate, neat and tidy because the life she knew is over. As I walked through both I considered whether either could be home for us. Did it feel like a place we could gather for holidays, wake up and read the paper together, head in and out of daily as we go about our lives? Was it a place for Don and I to grow older together?

Signs of the passing of life - a little family who is excited to begin living their life together in a rambly home, a home full of the middle-school years, consumed with sports and other activities, a son who still moves like he's in high school but pays the price the next day, and a woman who is facing the rest of her life without her mate. Where do we fit in all that, where is the right place for us to be? It's going to involve leaving behind a daughter and her family, and somehow that adds more pressure for it to be a place my heart longs to be.

Home - full and rich and crazy and busy - ebbing and flowing with energy and the end of the same. Complicated, but the stuff life is made up of.

Labels: Glimpse of the Heart