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My youngest son has his knees tucked under him on the living room floor, a finger tracing the outline of a puzzle piece. It’s a map of the United States, all worn cardboard and soft, faded colors. His finger moves slowly, carefully, around the big, familiar shape in the middle.
“This is us,” he says, more to himself than to me. The thud of his finger on the cardboard is the only sound, besides the low hum of the air conditioner and a mourning dove cooing somewhere outside the window.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of lukewarm tea, a stack of mail I should be opening, and this feeling that’s been visiting me lately. It’s a complicated kind of love, the kind you feel for a person you’ve known your whole life. You know their goodness down to the bone, and you also know their every fault line, their every contradiction.
That’s how I feel about this place. This is where I learned the specific comfort of a perfectly seasoned cast-iron skillet, the taste of bluebonnets on the breeze, the sprawling kindness of a neighbor who shows up with a casserole without ever being asked. It’s the feeling of belonging somewhere so deeply that the red dirt feels like a part of your own skin.
But then the rain comes, harder than it used to, and I watch the water rise in the creek behind our house with a familiar knot in my stomach. I hear snippets of tense conversations in the grocery store aisle about what our children are learning, or not learning, and what the future holds. The love is still there, but it’s tangled up with worry. It feels impossibly beautiful and impossibly fragile all at once.
How do you hold both things? The deep, grounding love for a home, and the quiet, persistent ache for its future? Maybe this is just what it means to care about something. To see it fully—the light and the shadows—and to choose to stay, to show up, to keep your heart open even when it’s hard.
My son fits the puzzle piece into its spot. “There,” he says, satisfied. He doesn’t see the complexities, not yet. He just sees home. A big, sturdy shape he can put his whole hand on.
I wonder if that’s the work of it, then. To hold this place, this idea of Texas, with that same gentle, certain pressure. To love what is good, to tend to what is broken, and to never pretend one exists without the other.
If you had to describe the soul of this place with one image, one flavor, or one feeling, what would it be? I’d love to know.
“This is us,” he says, more to himself than to me. The thud of his finger on the cardboard is the only sound, besides the low hum of the air conditioner and a mourning dove cooing somewhere outside the window.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of lukewarm tea, a stack of mail I should be opening, and this feeling that’s been visiting me lately. It’s a complicated kind of love, the kind you feel for a person you’ve known your whole life. You know their goodness down to the bone, and you also know their every fault line, their every contradiction.
That’s how I feel about this place. This is where I learned the specific comfort of a perfectly seasoned cast-iron skillet, the taste of bluebonnets on the breeze, the sprawling kindness of a neighbor who shows up with a casserole without ever being asked. It’s the feeling of belonging somewhere so deeply that the red dirt feels like a part of your own skin.
But then the rain comes, harder than it used to, and I watch the water rise in the creek behind our house with a familiar knot in my stomach. I hear snippets of tense conversations in the grocery store aisle about what our children are learning, or not learning, and what the future holds. The love is still there, but it’s tangled up with worry. It feels impossibly beautiful and impossibly fragile all at once.
How do you hold both things? The deep, grounding love for a home, and the quiet, persistent ache for its future? Maybe this is just what it means to care about something. To see it fully—the light and the shadows—and to choose to stay, to show up, to keep your heart open even when it’s hard.
My son fits the puzzle piece into its spot. “There,” he says, satisfied. He doesn’t see the complexities, not yet. He just sees home. A big, sturdy shape he can put his whole hand on.
I wonder if that’s the work of it, then. To hold this place, this idea of Texas, with that same gentle, certain pressure. To love what is good, to tend to what is broken, and to never pretend one exists without the other.
If you had to describe the soul of this place with one image, one flavor, or one feeling, what would it be? I’d love to know.
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