Icarus & Hestia...will the real Cheri please stand up!

"You've got to be kidding?"

"Nope," I said with a wry smile. "My mother always called me a 'free spirit', which I have sneaking suspicion meant I was an irresponsible dingbat."

"So you really just packed up two suitcases and left a note and took off?"

"That's the gist of it. Of course there is a lot more to the story, but ultimately I decided to take a chance and move three thousand miles away to be with someone I never thought I would see again. It's a miracle that it has all worked out well...too many times in my life I have jumped and looked later and it turned out to be a bad idea. But this time has been different."

I have never thought of myself as the adventurous sort. When I was a little girl, I was shy and always afraid to make anyone mad at me. I had the habit of crying when my feelings were hurt, and my father would get frustrated at my "clouding up and raining" whenever he would yell at me. I thought I would be a librarian some day, or maybe a teacher. I was afraid to take chances because I couldn't stand the idea of failing in front of everyone. However, somewhere along the way I made the fateful decision that there is no such thing as failure, as long as you can say you tried. And boy have I tried...many times to the total bewilderment of my family and friends. Yet I still find myself prefering to stay close to home much of the time. I don't have many friends, and I don't like to go out and party and have a "good" time. I am happy with solitude and a good book. Yet there have been times in my life when I have made a momentous decision and changed my life completely from that point on. When those times have come upon me I have never seemed to hesitate once I made up my mind (some have called that "bull-headedness").

I somehow seem to instinctively know that to fly toward the sun is the only way to know that you have truly lived this life. But you cannot have a life without a home and hearth to be attached to. You have to know who you are and where you belong before you can feel free to fly out into the world and experience what is out there. You must have somewhere to come back to, and people there who love you and know who you are. Adventure and excitement are wonderful things but if there is no one with which you can share your journey, it can become a very lonely pastime. Especially if your wings get a little melted while you are out there. I have made some mistakes in my life (some of them pretty big ones) and I have always tried to take responsibility for them. I would like to think I have learned from them too. But I also know that all those mistakes have made me the person I am today. Without those experiences, my life would be a very narrow and small place.

So we must all have a little Icarus and a little Hestia in us to be a whole person. To be too much of one or the other is to be a lopsided person. No one can continue to fly forever without landing once in a while to rest. Every bird has it's nest to come back to. And if it travels too far to come back to that nest, it builds a new one. Homelessness is one of the saddest experiences a human being can find his or her self in. And yet, never leaving home has been diagnosed as a sickness in some people. We all have to try to use our wings once in a while.

This brings us back to the conversation at the beginning of my philisophical assertions. It took place between myself and an acquaintance about three years ago, shortly after I came back to California to live. I had just told her that after finding my first love after twenty-eight years apart, I decided that I had to take the chance at happiness that he offered me. I left behind everything...home, car, appliances, everything that I had accumulated in the past 20 years or so. I packed two suitcases with everything I could fit into them, left my (soon to be ex) husband a note, and jumped on an airplane bound for California via Denver, Colorado. Some would say that this was an irresponsible and heartless thing to do. But after quite a few years of irresponsibility and heartlessness from others in my life, I came to the point where I was ready to jump into an adventure that promised love and joy and happiness for me. Luckily this time the jump was worth it. And I have a new hearth and home to call my own.

So the adventure continues....