Uprooted Roots

I was the kind of kid who climbed trees. Back before I learned how to be afraid of things, I would stuff a notebook and pen into my back pocket, climb with bare feet, and write poems from the safety and seclusion of the highest seat in our sycamore tree. I liked being able to see farther, the breeze making the branch creak and bend underneath me.

I also wrote down by the creek, sitting on large boulders my siblings and I called the King and Queen rocks, because they were thrones to us. I would see the water bend and bubble, keeping watch over my small kingdom, scooping up baby crawdads for fun until they pinched me. Whatever I wrote in those journals was garbage, but I remember thinking I was an artist, and that's what matters. All kids should feel like artists.

And the earth made me feel that way. To this day nothing inspires me like the wild of an undeveloped landscape, and spending enough time in one makes me feel like a created and natural thing, mortal and real and earthed. It's the calmest of feelings. Feels like I'm home.

But home-feeling is elusive to me now, not just because work and school keep me in the city, but also because all my residences are temporary. I am temporarily in a new house, waiting to find the home that will be mine and Taylor's. In a bigger sense I am temporarily in Atlanta, like a holding cell between the old home of Tennessee and the blank canvas of our future.

Atlanta is homelessness to me.

We were in Virginia for Christmas. It was obviously not easy to be away from Nashville, away from my family, and the landscapes and sights and smells that get me close to feeling at home. But watching Taylor there, bringing me into his old places and the peoplescapes he always knew, has made me think a lot about home. I have been reminded that for most people, the feeling of home is never truly complete. It is partially with our moms, and partially with our favorite dogs, and also with the trees that we used to climb for writing poetry. It is partially where we are used to sleeping, but partially where we used to sleep, or where the view out the window tells us something about how life should be. To me it's partially Nashville, partially Spring Hill, partially Camden apartments and Decatur, Georgia. Partially Colorado, partially Virginia, partially my favorite camping spots or gramma's house. It is partially all of the places that have made me who I am, and that's a little sad but a little hopeful too.

I want to always feel at home where my loved ones are, but I don't, and maybe it's because I read too much Wendell Berry but I think he has it right. He says home is related to land and earth, place-ness, and the trust that is earned with months and years of the days' and seasons' cycles.

In this city I am uprooted. Disconnected from the routines that make a place feel settled. I want to sink roots down wherever Taylor is, because he is largely home to me, but I don't think roots work that way. They don't just grow on people. They need some soil and routine; mornings and evenings; time to trust the ground underneath.

I want home to be Taylor, but it's ok to still be homesick for a settled feeling.
We will be uprooted together for now.
I'd rather be with him than anywhere else.
Even home.