Hill Holler

This is from Running from Safety, where Richard Bach is talking to his wife Leslie on the way home in the car from a dance. It was one of those passages that I read and reread at the time because it struck such a chord with me.

“Home, I think, is the known and the loved”. I felt it click inside, the way every real answer clicks in mind. “Isn’t it true? You sit down at the piano, just to play for yourself, you know the music and you love it, isn’t that coming home? I sit at the controls of a little airplane, there’s home for me. We’re together, you and me, so right now home’s in a moving automobile; next month it could be some different city. When we’re together, we’re home.”

“Home isn’t a place. Known and loved, I don’t think, aren’t nailed or roofed or planted. We can become attached to nails and roofs, but shift their order from known to un and when we come back we say what’s this pile of sticks? Home is a certain order that’s dear to us, where it’s safe to be who we are.”

A place where it’s safe to be who we are. So home isn’t just where we go to bed every night, it’s a place of sanctuary to be completely ourselves, without fear of judgment. It can be anywhere that you are, at any time, and you feel that way inside - living your life without compromising yourself to placate or appease others. With Mike, I am home. When I sing, I am home. The more I travel down my path and journey through life, the closer I feel to coming home.

When I read that piece, it brought to mind the old saying “Home is where the heart is”. That sums up that passage for me. When we do something we love, alone or with someone we love at our side, no holding back, purely for the love of it…then we are home.