I spent Thanksgiving weekend with my ever-growing family. I hugged my sister who still had the remains of her time in Romania hanging about her face like a rosy blush and we made tiny, secret plans. I explained "Great Expectations" to Franny in under thirty minutes and then we swooned over Douglas Booth together. I stayed up too late with my brother discussing heroes and warriors and everything good in life. I stood in the kitchen with my mother. I breathed in the smell of my father and made promises of what we'll build during winter break. I traded dreams with my older sister. I drove with my brother-in-law as copilot. And I held my niece, I held the small peach while singing loudly in church, and she fell asleep on my chest in a gentle manner that captured my heart even more.
I get to go home in a week and a half and do it all again and more.
Can I be honest? I'll be honest. I'm pretty good at this school thing. I'm okay at being smart. And A and I are making quite the little home over here. We love each other. We're good to one another. The mountains and hills are gorgeous too. Everything over here is pretty.
But it's not home for me.
And I'm beginning to doubt it ever will be.
Because I miss my parents. I miss my siblings. I miss my family. I miss our little house in our little town with our little church and our little friends. I miss it all. And even though I'm good at all this, sometimes exceptionally good, I still miss it. Nothing is the same and I know it never will be. But I just want that moment, you know? That homecoming moment like Jo March has in "Little Women" when she's been gone for so long and then just goes back to her home. The place of her childhood.
I want that moment.
I'm good at all this. And I will continue to be good at all this till I'm finished. But the hard truth is, I'm not cut out for all this. I'm different. I know that. People notice that about me. Sadly, I don't really belong. I'm one heck of a faker, but they still catch the small glimpses and realize that I'm pretending. They still know. And I do too, down inside the corner of my heart, I know that too.
The truth is, I belong in a place with a strong man and a house built with strong hands and laughing children and a wooden desk and white walls and acres of land and a lilac bush. I belong with high-beamed ceilings and cast iron pans and white dutch ovens and piles of old books and tins full of tea. I belong with tulips and hens that lay blue eggs and a basket full of chunky yarn and bamboo knitting needles. I belong with gingerbread and muddy rubbers and tiny slippers with pom-poms on the toes. I belong somewhere that is a place called home with people I adore.
I always wanted to be Elizabeth Bennet or Anne Shirley or Emma Woodhouse or Alice or someone else brave and beautiful. And even though oftentimes I am Wendy, she's just a girl, and the real truth is, I am Jo.
I am Jo March.
I just don't have a Laurie or a Friedrich Bhaer.
But I have the words. I have the stories. I have the family. The sisters. The small ambitions. The trunks full of papers and paintings. The Europe dreams. The living away. The loving children. The secret poems. The ribbons and twine. The tomboyish-ness. The flower crowns. The wooden boxes.
The reality is, I have always been Jo March, and I will always be Jo March.
And while I've tried to be other lovely women, and I've tried to mirror prettier beings, I always come back to her. I always continue in my Jo-like life and existence.
Honestly, I'm just a simple woman.
Yes, others are more gorgeous and smarter and wittier and funnier and wealthier and stronger even, but in actuality, while I would love to be all of those things, I am just a girl. I am just a woman. I am real. I am homely and plain and in some ways rustic and almost always merely simple.
Simple. That's me, a simple Bell.
These days, I am learning what is important to me and where it is I belong.
I just want to tell you, I'm going to finish all these wonderful blossoms I've begun, but once I'm done, I'm going back to that tiny bud that's always been there.
I'm going home.
Where home is at the end of all this though, that's the surprise.
