Roots and Community

For all of my adult life I have yearned for some place to "belong." This yearning comes from a wonderful childhood--I went to a small Catholic gradeschool, junior high and high school that lived and breathed the idea of family and community service, my parents were educators in the public schools in town and were very active in community theatre, politics, our church-- you name it. Although I didn't recognize it at the time, there really wasn't anywhere that my siblings and I went that we didn't somehow belong--that someone didn't know us or our parents. This belonging continued into my college years as I followed the family footsteps and attended my beloved Eureka--as the 5th Finch to walk 'neath the elms, Eureka was new, but yet, I wasn't a stranger.

When the time came for me to leave my college cocoon, I thought I was ready. I had my education, I was 21, and the time had come. What I had no idea of however, was how naked and alone I would feel in that first year by myself in a world were no one knew me or my family, and where all the town names and family names would be new to me. I felt disconnected, untethered, utterly alone. As I met my husband, became a stepmom, had my boys, and kept ridiculously busy with teaching and coaching, there was still an empty hole that cried out to be filled--and my husband felt it too. We both wanted the kind of life that we grew up in for our family. Eleven years into our family, this dream still has not come to fruition for us--our jobs and the needs of our children have given us our current life instead. But perhaps my understanding of how God calls us has grown, for while I still have some idealized vision of a different life for us floating in my "somedays"--I have been surprised by my own contentment lately.

A wise mentor shared with me a few years back that we are all called to put down roots--but some of us put them down deep, and others of us put them out wide. I have always thought I was a deep root person, but yesterday afternoon my best childhood friend called and left a message for me, last night I spent back at Eureka listening to a presentation by my father, surrounded by my family, this morning the boys were excited to go to their eye doctor because they said, "at least we know him--we have the same one every time," this afternoon a dear close friend from my current school called to "check-in," and this evening we are going out to dinner with a former student from my first school. Wide roots, I tell myself, might be a blessing after all.