I have finally come through the time that I began to refer to as Purging In Purgatory, equidistant between the life that was Dragonfly Cottage and the life that would be. That’s what life felt like there. And oddly it wasn’t just me. My dearest friend in the world, Jeffrey, came over late yesterday afternoon. It has been a very strange time, time out of time, but I wondered about that house the whole time I lived there. It was a 1940’s house and nothing ever felt right. My darling Jeffrey only visited me one time there.

Yesterday he came in so happy to be in my newly rebuilt cottage, he brought beautiful apples, brie, and a nice bottle of wine. He loved everything. He said it was so beautiful he just couldn’t get over it. Very c0lorful, yes, but light and airy, there is a kind of joy here that is felt. He explained that he just couldn’t go to that rental house. He got a terrible headache after being there, and dreaded going. It was something about that house. He asked Christy about it, a young woman that works for him and came over to help me once a week the whole 7 months I lived there. She said she always left with a headache. It was truly a kind of purgatory and the energy there wasn’t bright or light or joyous. In retrospect I wonder how much I, like the house that had burned down, had to shed to begin life anew? There was so much loss in the 8 months from the night of the fire to the day I moved back in, waves of loss in many ways, that it was akin, to me, to the Pupa stage where everything is too tight, painful, the last stages of shedding before the Dragonfly is free. I felt caught in the dark confines of the Pupa stage in those months in that little house, and other people felt it too.

I am drawn to people who, like me, are very sensitive to energy, and Jeff is an amazing soul. He said, just today, that returning to the house, seeing and feeling how light and beautiful it is, makes sense after a raging fire burned straight up and out through the roof, purifying any dark spirit energy or unhappy souls still left inside. I took a deep breath. We shall, of course, never know, but it is an interesting thing to think about.

My life here, now, is about making a home, the home I will spend the rest of my life in, God willing. Today I wrote on my new chalkboard, “Thank you God for my life.” I feel deeply grateful. I have been through a period of time I would not wish on anyone, and yet… even as I write that I know that I am happier than I have ever been and I seem to have had to go through what I’ve been through to get here. So I will leave everyone to their own journeys, and I will tell those who ask to hold on with all their might through the darkest hours because the dawn is just ahead.

I woke up this morning aching all over because I was pinned to the back of the couch like a butterfly pinned to a board in a science class by 3 pugs sleeping and snoring soundly. Our mattresses don’t arrive until Monday and the pugs are getting their bearings too. I got up twice to go to the bathroom and they all bounded up and were practically glued to my ankles as I walked to and fro. Normally if I have to get up in the night they stay asleep, or perhaps tiny Delilah will sit up and wait to make sure that Mama comes back, but it was our first night here and they, like I, have been having that very strange feeling that we are home but this isn’t our house, not quite, not yet.

But the sun did rise and the dawn did come and today it was glorious, that early morning autumn peachy pink light coming in through the studio windows displaying it’s glory across The Cozy Room floor where we slept, and first one small one, and then another, roused and bounced all over me until I said, “Okay, let’s GO! Let’s go OUT!” They all rushed out into the big, wide world that is our back yard here at Dragonfly Cottage, part gardens, part woods, and as they trotted around I perused the gardens, and then we all stood in the empty back corner where once there had been a Magic Ship. Interesting how it, too, disappeared with the first Dragonfly Cottage, even though a fire didn’t take it a tree falling in an ice storm did. And the saddest thing of all was that the grand, cast iron mermaid that had sat on the bough of the ship was face down in the dirt. I was shocked. How could they have left her there like that? Now she rests against the old 1800’s piece of wrought iron fence with a gate in it that I bought for the garden at a junk yard when I first moved in. It would seem that almost nothing was allowed to stay.

Now, having just arrived home at the beginning of autumn, my favorite time of year since I was a child, it feels like a beautiful time, a perfect time, to begin anew. I have to slog through the mountain of paperwork for disability now that I have finally made it home, and I have to begin to dream a new life here, a deeper life, a better life. My own old, dark spirit went up the night of the fire too. I don’t look any different but I feel about one hundred pounds lighter and goodness it feels fabulous.

The thing about living through a fire or, I’m sure, any other near tragedy when one’s life has been hanging in the balance and they barely escaped death, is that on  the one hand things that had seemed scary before no longer do, or not much, and everything seems possible. Somewhere a slate has been wiped clean and we can write a new story. My new art wall, 9 feet long, 1/3 white board, 1/3 chalkboard, and 1/3 corkboard is, I just realized today, a life size vision board. I am going to write and dream and dance and sing my way into a whole new life. As I write that I feel giddy, full of potent possibility abundant, everything is possible, yes, everything is possible!

And so I will record this journey here. I am casting the seeds of a glorious life now in my 60th year. Before I go to bed I am going to order seeds to plant in the fall garden. Poppies I think, thousands of poppies. They are Dorothy’s flower, and she knew, like I know tonight, that there is no place like home, and I don’t know what the future will hold but I know what tonight does. Tonight it is crisp autumn air coming in through the windows, and 3 sleeping snoring pugs curled up next to me on the couch. It is the feeling of a deep, gentle love in my belly, and a longing for someone far away, that kind of sweetness held in the heart like a note held long at the end of a beautiful song. What feels like the end is still a ripe, rich kind of beauty. I will savor every moment of my life now. The young rush. The gift of the years turned golden is the slowness of honey dripping almost suspended in time.

These are the golden days, and, at long last, I am home.