Home is Where Your Heart Grows

You can’t always tell where your heart will grow, or what it might grow.  They always seem to burst out of us in such unexpected ways.  Some fall to the ground like apples, become rooted to the very places they grew up, and become just like those apple trees they fell from.  Some get caught on the wind and blow far away in gusts of inspiration, and wind up growing in unexpected places. 

My friend, Paul, can attest to this.  He grew up in Michigan.  He found his way to Vashon Island of all places.  He met me there, and worked in the very same deli where all my best friends worked.  Like me, he was a non-native who was welcomed into the fold of tried-and-true islanders.  He finally felt the call to return to Michigan, and he even wrote me a nice note in Facebook about how he’d be going for good.  Well, to my surprise, I got another message from Paul today stating that he was back on the island once again.  I know the need to return, Vashon has a siren’s voice that calls me back often with the promise of love. 

My own heart is like a flower that goes to seed, flies away, finds a new inspiration, and a new chapter, and grows there.  Then, just after I've flourished, my blossoms fade, they fall away, and my seeds go off in a puff of wind to find my next inspiration.  I think, of all the flowers, I’m probably a sunflower.  The sunflower used to be a mermaid named Clytie.  She fell in deep, deep love with the Sun, and watched him from sun up to sundown.  Her face grew bronzed and bright under his glaring rays, and her limbs withered away from lack of eating.  The gods felt sorry for the mermaid who couldn't be loved by the sun, so they transformed her into a sunflower, which watches the sun from dawn to dusk as Clytie did once long ago. 

So my heart bursts into seeds that fly through the air.  They are eaten by birds and taken by wing to places and adventures that offer me enough soil to grow and become something new for the time being.  I grew on Vashon Island, once, and made myself at home in many gardens there.  Pieces of me grow there still.  But life and my own need for change (something that can devastate me when I don’t engender it myself) made me move along.  With all this chasing inspiration, I am very thankful that I have something to hold onto: Joseph.  I love him as much as Clytie loved the sun, more perhaps, because my love is returned.  So while I scatter my heart-seeds wherever I might, I still always grow to turn my face wherever Joseph may walk, from dawn to dusk, from dusk to dawn.  Joseph is the constant in my ever-changing life.  I’m lucky enough to be with a man who can grow and change as much as I need to, but still keeps me grounded and rooted where I am. 

I am the luckiest of sunflowers; I’m loved by my sun. 

And I’m happy to know a good friend is back on Vashon Island.  I can’t imagine the place without him.