heaven is a home you never have to leave
There’s a sense of quiet desperation that pervades the last evening but one before we return to the US.
We’ve been in Vence for the past three and a half weeks. It was originally scheduled to be just two, but then members of our party successively came down with COVID and we had to extend our stay. Fortunately, my parents had rented the second house for another week, and the owners let us stay another half week beyond that.
It’s been a story of achingly beautiful scenes interspersed with moments of hands-up overload. But now everyone is well, and I feel the old familiar, visceral need to throw my arms around the stone walls, the immaculately-trimmed hedgerows, the sea and sky in one view and the history of this place. My favorite times have been nightly walks with Luke, watching the light fade behind the four old baous in a row, sentinels that will watch over this place long after I’m gone.
I want to bottle the breeze I felt on a warm day in Coursegoules. I parked the car and Diane and I leaned against the concrete wall, looking out over the valley and spying the little windsock on the bleak ridge behind. We watched the cloud shadows play over the little green fields and villas, shielded from the coast by the first wave of the pre-Alps.
It’s subtly different than last time, but there are broad similarities. There are things I’m genuinely looking forward to returning to, like our house, animals, projects and the general ease of everything. Last time, I had very little of that. But there’s still a generous feeling of displacement that’s building, even now.
More than anything, the whole process, as it repeats, reinforces a feeling of mortality. These times end. They slip through my fingers over and over again and I don’t know how to get HERE from THERE. That’s the paradox: Back when I was more flexible, I didn’t have the work ethic to apply myself and figure things out, and now that I do, my flexibility is severely constrained. As soon as I say that, though, I’m reminded that when I set my mind to it, even then, I could make things happen, so perhaps it was something else.
Regardless, that time is gone, this one is soon to be, and my time will be up as well, sooner than I think. What will I make of it? What will WE make of it? God and His Word are the only things I’m sure of, and I need that fact to be more than cold comfort as the core ache of another departure looms.