Back online, and home

We got home from Europe last night. Other than being able to answer a few e-mails one day, I had no internet access there for two weeks, so I couldn't blog about the Terra Madre-Slow Food event in Italy or about visiting Nicolas' father and step-mother in Holland and Belgium. The back-log of pictures and revelations is immense. I will post about all of it when I wake up at five again, tomorrow morning, with jet lag. This morning we all ate duck eggs and toast with rhubarb jelly that Nicolas' father had made with rhubarb grown in his back yard. I like that early morning jet lag.

Having been surrounded for two weeks by Europeans who are all eager for an Obama victory, it was strange to be in line today to vote. I am part of several communities - the unschooling community and the international slow food community, to name a few. But standing in our small southern town's community center today, listening to the conversations between the locals, all of whom seemed to know one another, I was very much aware of being an outsider in the physical community in which we live. The talk was of church socials, of "the terrible twos, threes and fours", and of whose parents are in which nursing homes. There are McCain billboards in most of the yards of our town. I am pretty sure that I was the only one there giving Obama my vote.

Here's a visual of how I'm feeling right now, having been immersed in a very different place for a while and not yet completely landed here.
Jesse threw himself into the task of washing and polishing his Belgian coastal treasures.

Gillen put on his baseball shirt, boots and cowboy hat in order to play soccer in the back yard.They are back in the U.S.A. and glad to be here.

I am thankful to Tuki the dog, Fracas the cat, my mother-in-law (who had a table and dinner ready for us when we come home) and especially, the trees, for their warm welcome.I do love this country. I do love that there are so many different points of view allowed and espoused here. I do (usually) appreciate our young, enthusiastic, bumbling ways. But it was good to get away and see it all from a distance and to discover other places we could easily also call home.