Safe Havens....

I've been fortunate that for most of my life I've had a Home.  I lived in the same town for the first 18 years of my life, moving into my childhood home when I was a toddler and into a house just outside of town in my mid-teens. I left for college, and returned for a couple of years afterward. And then I became a nomad.

I moved dozens of times during medical school.  If it didn't fit in my Toyota Corolla, I didn't keep it.  I moved from one hospital to another every 4 - 6 weeks.  I lived in Long Island, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Detroit, and Buffalo, sometimes moving 12 hours between the end of a shift on Saturday and the start of another on Monday.

I've been where I am now for almost 30 years.  This is MY kids' home town (which still seems odd to me).  I don't have to move again unless I want to.  It's Home. And for every time I have to leave with Babygirl to park ourselves in some hospital elsewhere, there is an endless sense of safety and relief when we get back.

For those of us who have been uprooted and thrown from our safe havens, finding Home is a miraculous and wonderful thing.  It isn't a place, necessarily:  It's the knowledge of belonging.  Every once in a while someone will ask me about some bit of local history and I'll have to admit that I'm not 'native' here, but I belong nonetheless.

I looked ahead on my schedule for the week, and I have a new patient. She's a brand-new baby, whose mother I cared for when SHE was a brand-new baby, and that is just another aspect of Home.

Gratitude for our safe places, amen.

DeeDee