It's Time

 

“No I am not roaming aimlessly

through the alleys and bazaar

I am a lover searching for his beloved”   —Rumi

For years I have been satisfied with enough money in the bank to travel extensively and not worry about a “home”.  After my oldest daughter died at age nineteen my marriage dissolved. My ex-wife bought my share of our home. Debt free, I realized I had lost my sense of having roots. The world called me to explore. Grabbing my art supplies and camera, I took off wandering.

Sometimes, when returning to live in my hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, I would go to a beautiful home and think, how wonderful to own property. Then I would search my soul to see if I had desire for such ownership. It wasn’t there.

I have been to the Taj Mahal, the Vatican halls, in mountaintop palaces. And I have been rapturously at peace and content sitting on earthen floors in houses of baked mud in Egypt. I have felt at home on the back of camels in Morocco or on elephants in Thailand. 

Then, impressed by somebody’s home and thinking, “do I want this?” the answer came back no; I have more. The grandness of the earth and its glory is my home.

I rented . . . and could come and go.

When a homeowner, I had always cultivated gardens. Afterward, I noticed an apathy about doing anything “rooted.” Might I be depressed? I wondered. Perhaps the loss of my beloved Naomi had torn me. When she left this earth, some part of me went with her.

I have been with Amy now three years.We married two years ago. For the past two years I have made a summer garden. The feeling of wanting to stop and settle, to be content with small things has come back. 

This week I sent money to a bank account in Germany. It is the downpayment on a home in Oaxaca, Mexico. The German woman who built it lost her partner and decided to move back to her native country. Now, Amy and I are moving from our native country to live in that magical Mexican house we found and love. We will own it outright.

It’s time.

“The world is one country and mankind its citizens”  —Baha’u’llah