Home is where you hang your hat?

Home is where you hang your hat? Nonsense. Rubbish. Definitely not. Nope.

(A Double Rainbow over Patten Pond, graciously supplied by our beloved Turners)

Home is where your pulse quickens at the sight of it. Home is where your eyes delight in the viewing of it. Home is your answer when asked where you are from. Home is where your soul feels like it is wearing pajamas.

Home for me is Maine. Tonight as I was fussing at my husband (hey, it happens) I declared that I was leaving in two weeks. He looks at his watch and informs me I am leaving in one week. Gulp. I am both panic stricken with all I have to do before I leave and energized with the excitement of it.

Have you ever smelled the crisp ocean air? You probably have, but every cell in your body doesn't breathe an audible sigh of relief, I'll bet, like mine does. I've often said that the only down side to Colorado is that it lacks the ocean (although we do have a marina-if you don't believe me..look it up).

We will do what all folks do upon entering the holy ground of one's birth, we will eat all of our favorite foods until our bellies cry out for mercy. Despite the recommendations against it, we will eat lobster. I will have to have tender Maine shrimp, my personal favorite. If you think you have eaten shrimp, but have never tasted this delicacy you have not lived, my friend. That, I am sorry to say, is a statement made from the painstaking education hard won over years of tedious research and is not, in any way conjecture.

I will spend time with family. Not the ones that have been grafted in but the actual, looking like me, same gene pool, family. We will laugh, tell stories about each other and to each other, and for good measure eat some family food favorites. I think we have elected an Italian food theme and I intend to make one or two of my famous cheesecakes. I hate to toot my own horn ( is that the definition of blog?) but I used to have a cheesecake making business. I have probably just outed myself and will have to come out of retirement, when those who live here find out about this, but I can make a good cheesecake.

In Maine I will see the sights that my eyes never grow tired of. I spent the first part of my life in Central Maine, outside of Augusta, in China, Maine. I joke now, that this is probably where I developed my taste for Asian men. You do know that I am married to a Vietnamese man who makes me very happy so it all probably originated here. Anyway, I will need to see the blue of China Lake, I just have to.

I will sleep under the stars, not blotted out by city lights, in the crisp fall evenings of fabulous New England. In Surry, Maine on Patten Pond where my parents' home is, I will fall asleep to the croaking of bull frogs that sound rather like the belching of old men. I will wake each morning, among the first Americans, to greet the newly risen sun. I so look forward to sitting on the screened porch and sipping my coffee, breathing a sigh of pure contentment, while basking in the glorious feeling of being home.

Now, I have hung my hat in many places, both in and out of this great country but there is only one place that I call home. I bet you have a place like that also. Have you been there recently? For those of you fortunate enough to live in the very place where your soul wears pajamas, I can only imagine how incredibly lucky you must feel. Sigh. It must be nice.