Home!

Home! What a good feeling. I was born in Steinbach and spent my first 15 years in Kleefeld in a house that my father and brothers built. Then was a longer stint in Squamish, B.C., and an even longer one in Calgary, AB. Both of those locations became 'home' at one time or another. But now I feel like I'm really home.

I've been asked more than once if this felt like 'coming home.' After all, my roots are here in Manitoba. My answer was generally something about having been gone so long, that Manitoba isn't really 'home' anymore. Today, however, as I drove the country roads from Ile des Chenes to New Bothwell - where the best cheese in the world is made - I realized I was indeed home. Where does that feeling come from?

Is it because our children live in Winnipeg and are just a call away? I can babysit for an hour or an evening very easily. They can 'drop in' for supper when we have family or friends visiting. We can share the produce from my daughter's garden, or from the market.

Or is it because my dad and several siblings live only an hour and a half away, and visits are much more frequent? Or that I'm running into cousins frequently... at church, or especially at The Back Porch - the coffee shop being run out of my grandma's old house?

Or perhaps it is our home... we've unpacked and hope to be here a very long time... The view from the couch where I frequently sit is our deck and the trees beyond. The green of the Manitoba Maples and the Purple of the Schuberts. Beautiful!! With a 70' wide yard, I can hardly even imagine that half a year ago our view was the siding of our neighbors house. Our neighbors are the friendliest people around.

Or maybe it is being back in the country. Not quite 'country' like the farm where I grew up, but at least it's not city. I can drive 10 minutes and be in the city, or, if I choose, as I did this morning, to drive in the other direction, then I can find a cheese factory, meat & sausage market 10 minutes away along country roads, and 10 minutes from there, a vegetable stand, bakery and grocery store, and friendly conversation in every place. The drive takes me past beautiful green and golden fields (I must add that I am not speaking as a farmer here - they would not say the fields are beautiful this year. The rain has made things grow poorly and the fields are patchy.) But it is still scenic; everything green and yellow and golden... pair that with a blue sky full of fascinating cloud formations.

Today someone told me we've had terrible weather here in Manitoba... so terribly wet. But it mostly rains at night, and when it does rain, it is still warm. The mosquitos were bad our first few weeks, but even that has settled down. We have eaten many, many meals outside.

There are some serious flaws in our yard. There is no lilac bush, nanking cherries, strawberries or raspberries. That will need to be fixed. But I feel like I have years to make this place perfect. And for now, I am home.