On rootedness

Friday my husband and I met with a mortgage "originator". He asked, "Are you planning to still be living in this house in five years? In ten?"

I don't know.

My mother's father lives on the farm that has been in our family for almost two hundred years now. I will never live there, nor will my siblings or parents.

My father's father settled late in life. His mother died when he was young, and he spent his childhood being passed from aunt to aunt. When he grew up, he was a preacher, and the conference moved him from town to town as he was needed. They bought their first house when he retired.

I grew up three hours from where I live now. My sister still lives in the town we grew up in. My parents still live in the house they bought when I was five.

Iowa calls to me in a voice that sometimes only I seem to hear. As we travel, I hear her sweet song when we approach the border. Always, always grateful to be home, but feeling also that home is grateful to have me back.

My teacher learned to ground in California using the tree of life meditation. Naturally she used the redwoods. Then she moved here, to the prairie. No redwoods here. Not even close. She had to start over.

What do I gain by being connected to this place? To these people? To these things? What do I give up?