Home is where the heart is.

It's been a tough time. Last week, while I struggled to turn chaos and ruin into some semblance of a warm and inviting homestead - (despite royal sonshine's teenage wasteland rearing its ugly head) - unbeknownst to me, 3000 miles away, my mother struggled against her body, against age, against a heart that all of a sudden was now failing her. I can literally feel my heart breaking. I'm so exhausted. My world feels so very fragile.

Today, things in the East seem to be on a tense standby - a vast improvement of the earlier code blues and moments where time stood completely still for what seemed like years. The fragile tide has turned and we all have, what looks like, a stronger foothold from the shifting sand of the weekend. My mother's color has returned to her beautiful olive skin and there is life back in her soft blue eyes, albeit slightly veiled in a fear that has never been there before. She is out of the hospital, away from IVs, machines that beep and buzz, the sound of nurse's rubber soles softly padding down the sleek, cold hallways and once again in the comfort and beauty of her own home, and perhaps, really out of the woods. Thankfully she is surrounded by her many sisters and her sons, my brothers -- all whom live very close to her and have fewer ties that bind elsewhere, so to speak, than I do.

So, after surgeries, the implants of several stints, and many silent prayers, my mother's fragile health has turned down the dark invitation to dance with death and seems to be on a sure course back to the living. I leave that all that behind and travel back over time zones, safe zones, putting the miles and distance back between us.

Cautiously, I exhale. I keep finding myself so lightheaded and realize that I'm holding my breath. Again.

Away from the tension, ever-present criticism and all-present perfection of my world to the East (there are oh so many reasons that I live 3000 miles away, but I digress), I have landed firmly back in the West and take refuge as my knees give out and I sink safely into the warm, comfortable love that exudes from my husband, my son, and my ever-faithful, ever-happy bundles of love that parade through life as dogs - and I'd like to include "the familiar", but unfortunately there isn't much "familiar" at the moment, due to the state of my house. My project.

I feel for the first time that I may have bitten off more than I can chew, but I am thinking that's the exhaustion and stress of the week speaking to me. All of this is catapulting me into a different frame of mind and focus. I'm now desperate to have my home finished and put together. I need that. There is too much chaos and uncertainty around me -- I need a soft place to land, and that, at the moment, needs to be my home.

Off I go to try and make that happen.