Home

I came back to the motherland yesterday for a quick visit. It's incredible how beautiful it is here. I miss the south, I miss the civility, the warm moist smell of the soil, the slower pace. The ride to Charlottesville is always a favorite. I pass through the battlefields of Manassas where they were putting up new rough hewn log fences, I see the hills spilling dandelions across the slopes and forsythia waving it's yellow arms recklessly up to the sky. Long carpets of daffodils lay before me, and it's spring and I am glad to be here.

As I look up at the sky, though, I think of Kenya and my heart warms to that. I think of the rivulets of red that pour over my feet when it rains, the incredible noise of the droplets on the tin roofs. I smell the air rich with the aromas of flowers and damp and my heart swells to that as well. I shall return soon, and it will be a difficult trip, as they always are. It's not the travel, though that can be exhausting, it is the mission that I carry on my back.

These worlds I live in, each has it's expectations of me, and I of them. My Board, patient and generous with their time, is pushing for fiscal responsibility both here and in Kenya. The schools and people over there, not understanding what their tasks are to be accountable to us irritates me. I have gone over and over the requirements, I have taught it, I have given them forms, I have taught it again, and still the idea of being fiscally responsible escapes them when it comes to the Muzungu. My white skin must mean I am a donor and not really serious about what is needed. But I am serious
and the exhausting task of raising money must bear some fruit.

I am grateful to our treasurer. She is clear, concise and enormously talented. She reminds us all that the frantic activity we are now undertaking to raise the money needed for One Village must be more measured and methodical. I am glad she has stated the obvious. We cannot continue to rely on God's generosity, and she is right, it is better to give a little that can be counted on that to up the ante. When I go, I must explain that as well.

I love my worlds. I love my Boston world as well. So what is home? Once someone predicted that I would have no home, because I would belong to the world. I find that truer each day I live. I move between worlds and delight in each and feel pain in each. No one place has the right to call me theirs, but I suspect each do. I am Mama Susan in Kenya, Mom down here in the south, and Mother Madrigal in Boston. Sometimes it's lonely, sometimes I shout with joy over my freedom.

I guess home is where my heart is, and each place has a piece of it. So often people struggle with belonging to someone or some group of people. I think one of the greatest things I got when I turned 60 is that you don't have to worry about that. It doesn't matter, for in the end if you run your life around who you belong to you might end up missing so much of life for fear of angering the person you belong to.

Home, in the end is really just clicking the ruby slippers 3 times and appreciating where you land.