Coming Home

Such a strange and wonderful thing, returning to our homeland.

Sophie welcomes us home!

I’ve got to admit, we’ve been hermits. But the best kind of hermits The soaking it all in, taking things slow, working on the farm, doing things we love kind of hermits. We’ve been home for more then a month now, and we’re sluggish to get cell phones or jump into the crazy swirl or technology and business. For me, it seems like a pretty big stretch from the world of latrines and clinic without electricity to cars that talk to you and i-phones that order pizza’s for you at the push of the button. It’s not that I think they are bad. Probably more then ever I think they are remarkable, and offer so many possibilities. I love can’t believe that we can download cd’s from the library, or watch a movie online or send e-mails to our friends who are far away from computers. Amazing. It’s just that I think they are a bit complicated.

Every new technology offer more options, but asks a question, too, it seems. What will we spend our time on, who do we stay in contact with, but do we buy, what should we do with it. I think that’s a bit more of the complexity that makes my head spin a bit in coming home, and what migh feul my hermitage, just a little bit. We have so many choices here in America. Again, choices aren’t bad, they are wonderful in many ways, but they are complicated. A few choices are good, but too many could be recipe for madness. When we first got home I spent a whole afternoon wondering around the grocery store in my small town, marvelling at the millions of options we’re asked to make when shop for food. Aside from the staggering amount of every kind of fruit, vegetables, breads baked goods, meats to choose from, there are the more complex choices of whether to buy local food, organic food, chemical free this or that, gluten free such and such and pretty soon your head is spinning.

And the toothpaste aisle! My goodness. You could spend a week there, comparing the styles colors, soft vs. firm, electric vs. do it yourself toothbrushes. Once you pass that hurdle, you’re on to the big decision what kind of toothpaste you’d like to take home- natural vs. whitening, sensitive or regular, what color, what brand and on and on. Hard not to let my mind drift back to little market stalls in Melut where they’d just hand you a tube when you asked for toothpaste, and that’s all there was to it. Toothbrushes? Well, they used a worn end of local tree to make a ‘toothbrushing stick.’

Again, it’s not that it’s not amazing to have such luxuries as a bathroom just feet from your bedroom, electric stoves and seat warmers in your car- it’s just that it can be a bit, well, complicated. I suppose that’s you’ll finding hermits like us taking it slow to dive back in to the wonderful and mysterious US of A. Until the world stops spinning a bit, you’ll find us focusing on the things we do understand, the faces of folks we love, food we love to eat and for Scott, wood that needs to be chopped. That seems enough for now.