Back (Home)

Yesterday morning we woke up very early in our own bed, back (home) after four weeks away. The dawn was grey with fog and ships sliding quietly into the still harbour, and it turned into a day of re-entry and reorientation, a day of laundry and vacuuming and digging a hole and pulling weeds and resting and drinking rum punch and eating sweet corn, and a day of sunshine and blue skies. It finished with A. and E. out on the deck taking turns chasing bubbles from the automatic bubble blower I bought from a guy selling them near the top of Istiklal a few nights ago and nodding off later in front of the laptop.

This morning we are in our house and in our home, and it’s good to be here, good to be back. The ground ivy at the edge of our “lawn” is in full and happy bloom, along with the forget-me-nots, buttercups, and bleeding hearts, and there are chickadees and goldfinches in the treetops outside my window. It’s a bright morning here in Ferguson’s Cove.

One of the wonders of this trip, besides our many adventures in Istanbul, Ciralı, and the Syrian Desert, has been the realization that we have more than one place in the world that feels like home, more than one place where we feel welcomed and loved by the people who live there. It is both a privilege and a blessing, and it is always difficult when it comes time to leave – as Rashid loudly insisted, “No good-byes!” -- and to start those long leaps over mountains and oceans and cultures we need to make to get back here, back to this home.

My last post was completed in Ortaköy almost a month ago, a few days after we landed and before we headed for Syria. There haven’t been any more in the interim because we were too busy in Türkiye and because access to blogspot was denied in Syria, so my task now is to sift through the images and memories to construct a few posts to give some idea of what the whole thing was all about.

I will do that, but I’ll have to fit it in with finishing digging that hole and pulling weeds and mowing and planting the garden and getting to all the other tasks attached to this home. I will keep you posted.