My Heart Home

Gray hills and a red field in this view looking northwest from ML Ranch site near Lovell Wyoming in the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. Copyright by WyoJones. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

When most older couples (or well-seasoned—ouch!) talk about retiring, about where to settle in their final home, it is often in the South. In warmer climes. I’m sure the hubs and I aren’t the only ones to move North when they retired, but we seem to be in a minority.

Through the years, we’ve been all over the map about where we wanted to retire. We’d dream about this or that sassy place. But as the years passed and we got closer to an actual decision, we began to push the dreams aside and try to figure out what was the practical choice or—the choice we could live and die with.

Yup, we weren’t just picking a place to live, but also a place to die.

We originally decided to stay in Texas for a lot of reasons, but when it came time to pull the trigger, neither of us could pull a trigger for a place that wasn’t in Wyoming.

We both grew up in Northern Wyoming, but we had lived away from Wyoming longer than we’d lived IN Wyoming.

For the hubs, he couldn’t imagine settling anywhere too far from his beloved Yellowstone Park.

For me, I wanted to be closer to family. (It was a good call because I got to spend a little time with my parents before they passed and I am loving being close to my sister.)

But there was another bonus I hadn’t counted on when we moved back. It dawned on me gradually that I finally felt at HOME. We’ve lived some wonderful places and met some amazing people—people that to my deep gratitude, still proud call me “friend.”

But…home.

It crept over me slowly. A sort of relaxing of my insides as I settled back into being a Wyoming Gal with hardly a blip or bump. I see the bleak winter landscape and I remember, memories bubbling up from deep inside, spilling over into a lovely sense of finally belonging in a place that I understand right down to my soul.

Home. 

Home is many things to many people. Home has been many places for us and I recognize that my heart home is different from that for my children. They grew up in all those distant places and I’m sorry, that for them, they won’t be able to come “home” to us where they grew up. Perhaps that one reason why I stayed so anchored to Wyoming. My parents lived out there lives here in Wyoming.

But I believe it is more than that. When people ask me why I came back, I tell them, “I came home.”

Home.

Have you lived away from your heart home? Been fortunate to live your years in your heart home?

Perilously yours,

Pauline

P.S. Time is running out for the Sorcery & Steam Bundle! It goes off sale March 15, 2018!!!