I'm back in Oz with lots of pictures from home...there was a day I sat in my old room and looked out the window at a most familiar scene. My heart swelled and shrunk as waves of memories collided with the deep nostalgia only home can bring.



Padding downstairs in the frigid and dark hours of morning, I would feel the thick carpet as it moved beneath my feet, light flickered and hummed as it came on, welcoming the smell of coffee flavored with America's sweetest creamers. The great midwestern sun would pulse its way upward as dogs began to stir, and the sound of the voices of loved-ones echoed through the house. There were always voices.

As I lay in my own bed this morning, I closed my eyes and tried to remember the comfortable feel of quilts, the hum of dad's breathing machine, the scratching of squirrels climbing up trees outside my window. I bent my ears to hear the sounds of mom's piano, notes now lost upon the winds of a continent I have left behind.

The thick fog of my own village has settled over the mountain, and I am home to the family that is now mine... the little feet I will strain to hear in years to come, the voices I will long for when this moment, too, has passed.