On Being Home

It's evening here in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
From the doorway of our hotel, I can see the ocean. Bright sparkling blue during the day. Mysteriously dark and quiet during the night.

It still hasn't sunk in that we live here. That this is our home.

In many ways, we're reversing what our ancestors did so many decades ago. They left the East to pursue their dreams of land, of raising their families under the prairie sky. They left their safe, comfortable life for one filled with unknowns. They were gutsy....and a little crazy.

And now we are. Back in the East.
Pursuing a dream. Part gutsy. Part crazy.
We're sorting out all the details of making it our home. First on the list: finding one.

We both fell in love with the first one we looked at and it does gave great possibility. Almost all the houses here are over a hundred years old and painted every color of the rainbow.
I love it. It feels like home here.

There was no great 'ah-ha' moment when we stepped out of the airport. It's inland so there wasn't even the tang of salt in the air to say ' hey, welcome!'

That moment came quite a bit later in our first day here. We drove from the airport to Wolfvillle, passing through wineries that were reminiscent of our time in New Zealand.
And then, I saw it.

Just Us Coffee Roasters.

When I was researching Wolfville, I learned about the coffee shop and Roastery along with the local year-round farmers market.

I smiled hugely at the barista as she prepared our drinks as if I were smiling at an old friend and enjoyed every detail of the cafe.
We found the ocean after that. The beautiful, always changing, multicolored, huge expanse of ocean.

It's lovely, it's comforting, it's home.

(I wrote this on my iPhone so the photos all end up at the bottom, forgive any other weird typos...:-)