Home Again Home Again

I'm feeling that old familiar tug.

From Vegas trip 2011

Home again home again jiggityjig.

From Vegas trip 2011

The landscape out my car window is the desert, dry and red but also bursting with life. Scraggly dry-loving plants have emerged, desert flowers are blooming. The Virgin River, I can see, is flowing muddy and flowing.

From Vegas trip 2011

I sigh. Like always, I'm feeling that old sadness as I speed away from my home back to my home.

Except... this time, it's backward.

From Vegas trip 2011

Today, I'm heading toward Utah from Vegas. It used to be the other way around. I'm used to being sad because I'm leaving my loved ones in Utah for my home in Vegas. It's been a year, and now my home is in Utah.

And I'm so sad to be leaving Vegas.

As much as I griped about it, there is a bit of my soul in Sin City. I left it in each of my babies I had there. I left it with my dear friends who work to bring babies and women better care there. I left it in my dear friends.

From Vegas trip 2011

It was a joy to see them again. To hug them, to see how their babies had grown, to see some of them have HAD babies, to have gone from doulas to midwives... it was so lovely.

From Vegas trip 2011

From Vegas trip 2011

So, to drive away, well that was harder than I thought it would be.

How I miss them.

But here I am, at home, which is where my whole heart and most of my soul reside, with their dirty little faces and the smelly dog, and what seems to be a rogue stinky diaper hiding somewhere, to toys and shoes, and clothes and a lawn in need of mowing. And my bed. Ahhh my bed.

Home is awfully lovely as well.

Tomorrow, highlights from our trip. Aren't you so excited?