What a Sensation

I'm too charged to sleep.  I close my eyes lying in my bed, awake.  What a sensation.  My bed.  At home.  In Ohio.  With my family.  Safe.

I sift through memory after memory as they pop up in my head just like the balls that decide the winning lottery numbers.  They come in short snippets, sometimes just images, other times full experiences.  Some come just as feelings while others are series of events.  Memories.  I have been gone for a year and now I’m home.  I’ve been to the ends of the Earth alone and have made it back safe and sound.  At home.  With my family.

My body is relaxed but my mind ticks through memories of the year.  Sitting on the porch in Hawai’i, the view of Arthur’s Pass in New Zealand, the Hindu ceremony in Singapore, finishing and passing the scuba instructor exam, the dogs I passed on my way to work in St Maarten, cleaning the rail on the sun deck of the yacht, and biking through the coconut farms on my way to work in Indonesia.  Memory after memory comes to mind then is replaced by another one just like leafing through a textbook and looking at the pictures, stopping occasionally to read a caption.  But now I’m in my bed.  In Ohio.

I still can’t sleep but I’m enjoying the feeling too much to move.  Everything at home is just as I left it, almost untouched.  The memories keep coming to me, almost as if my mind doesn’t want me to forget.  Everything is as I left it so my mind is afraid that I’m going to pick right up where I left off as if nothing ever happened.  It does already feel like it was a different life, like it was a different me.  As the memories float past, I remind myself that they are my memories.  It wasn’t someone else, it wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t a parallel universe, and I didn’t imagine it.  I went to the other side of the world and now I’m back.  In my bed.  Safe.

As I lie awake with all of these thoughts swimming in my head, I can’t help but think of the future.  I’m excited to see friends, go to church, drive through town, and even in the more distant future like working in Egypt and going back to school.  It’s all going to be an adventure.  I’m ready for it but I don’t want to rush it one bit because I am enjoying too much the feeling of being safely at home, in Ohio, with my family, in my bed. What a sensation.