home

i'm home.  and as much as i love northern california- i love being home- and i love the little people who make it home, so much- walking in that door was like christmas.  now they've gone to bed and i'm out on my porch and the sun is so gentle at this hour, like a friend who doesn't want to leave- it's all so green and happy.  and i'm feeling green and happy with it.  trying to wake up from my trip and re-enter.  there was so much there- so many people and places- it was soul feeding.

yesterday i was reminded that when I run, I need to run alone- or at least in silence. i'm incapable of talking and running- it messes up my breathing. it turns out that i'm also incapable of listening while running- it messes up my thinking.

i guess yesterday i needed to think because as mike and I ran around the streets of lido island in newport beach, i just needed that quiet space. maybe i needed to process the week of visits and friendship, or maybe i needed to process these very streets that i last ran down 25 years ago. house after house of perfectly landscaped yards and well kept painted houses lavishly designed and fitting neatly onto their small but ocean-viewed lots. another step back in time - but this time- way back.

the last time i ran down these streets i was fifteen and on spring break with my family and best friend. those were years of beginning.  beginning to figure ourselves out, beginning to separate from our parents, beginning to clarify our faith, our choices.  it was the spring after we'd been been to peru and had our eyes opened wide to the poverty of others.  it was the spring before i'd go to africa for the first time.

this street, that house owned by my fathers best friend, was where i would go with my family just before i got married, where an aunt would remind me of the role of submission in marriage and i would fight it- and then keep fighting it for years- because i foolishly didn't understand what it means.
to submit- to give over- to yield.  that's what we do in relationships- in marriages- at least if we want them to work.

it's where our family would come after my grandfather died- that grand patriarch- who'd spent most of his years in california; thinking, writing and talking about God.

yesterday just running the main street via lido nord meant something.  that street we would run down in the late afternoons so many years ago, listening to our 'walkmans' and  passing all the perpendicular street names, in alphabetical order, spelling out parts of our lives that we didn't even know about yet.

via quito- ecuador, where heather would go and live after high school while i was in college- our first big separation.

via trieste- oh how many seasons of life this street speaks to. 

via undine- close to the word 'udine'- where i would go in italy after medical school - bringing back memories of gelato and baby zoe and the warmth of those people.

via venezia- again- my mind was back in italy- wandering streets and canals and going over all the little staired bridges and sitting on such old stones that had held up so many centuries of people before me.

so that is where i was as i ran.  there and also fast forwarding to what is coming and to the dramatic contrast of my sneakers on that pavement and my sneakers on the red dirt of uganda- weath and poverty- and i, somehow privileged enough to experience, to live, both.  it was humbling and moving. 
my mind was a slide show of blessing and memory.  so i couldn't talk.  i couldn't even listen.  i just need to be- to have my feet moving me through the process- allowing my body to go as fast as my mind needed- to breath it in and out and in again.

and now, i'm home.