Ma Ain Folk

Terrible jag of homesickness came over me last night as I drove away from a friend's book launch party.  There's a line from an old Scottish song about it, that desribes it perfectly: "..and it's aww that I'm longin' fer ma ain folk, be they simple and plain folk...".  There's no place like home no matter how dysfunctional.  In ours, there was love and laughter and horror all mixed together.

Another friend I met at the party is a jazz poet, working out a tv deal on his documentary film.  He handed me some of his publicity materials including  t-shirt, dvd and poster.  The poster is the same as the cover for the dvd and image on the t-shirt.  It's a photo of him in front of a redbrick house, taken in the back garden, all mossy and shrubby, in London.  "Touch of home for you" he grinned, having no idea where I would go with that.  Which was  straight down a path of nostalgia, reliving some of the best parts of my younger days in London.  It stirred something very deep in me, took me by complete surprise.

In the old days I might have gone to a British pub and downed a few, but instead I played a cd of some bagpipes, beating out the rhythms on the steering wheel and weeping.  Couldn't go straight home, so went to TJ's for a small grocery run, noted the Hallowe'en decorations, and that set me back a bit, reminders of my mother's tales of Hallowe'en in Scotland, where it all started, minus the pumpkins.
As I was being checked out, someone shouted over to the man at my cash register, asking if his wife had had the baby yet.  One of those moments that are golden for someone with mild ADD, so I jumped away from Scotland, London, Hallowe'en and into his world instead.  He tells me with a huge smile that the baby is due in a month, their fourth child, hoping for a girl as they have three boys already. I am cheery now and back to the car.

The best way to avoid suffering, is to be here, now, present with what is, I tell myself and smugly drive home thinking the jag of emotion is all dealt with.  It was all my own fault, looking back with longing and planning for the future.  And so forth.  When I got home, things were not actually behind me because I had to lug in the signed copy of my friend's beautiful new book (Opening the Gates of the Heart" by Carolyn CJ Jones,  www.gatelady.com) and the dvd, poster and t-shirt from my other friend, along with the groceries and mail, plus my purse and a sense of envy that my friends are "out there" doing their artist thing and I come home to a phone message about an accident my daughter has had.  I find myself unable to speak and later it gets unloaded with Larry, who, innocent bystander that he is, simply asked "How did it go sweetheart?" to which I initially lie and say 'fine".

This life business ain't easy.  Today I will accept the offer of a massage and get my hair cut.  And of course visit my stitched up daughter and be loving and mommy like, and remind her for the thousandth time of the importance of holding on to her caregiver's arm and not go stomping off on her own.  Larry let me swear my way through my feelings about it last night, and now I feel better.  The fact is "ma ain folk" (my own people, my present day peeps in case you didn't get it yet) are the ones I love best, the ones I want to be with.  There's NO going back.  That way is a vale of tears.