Sometimes I wonder

​Sometimes I Wonder12/5/2022
0 Comments

​Photo Blog, Photos by Ann Marie Ford
 
 
Sometimes I wonder where I’ll finally fit in. Where is home?
 
I am a third-generation son of the beautiful small community of Sharon, Massachusetts. This has always been my home, and but for a brief period, I have lived here my entire 66 years. However, as much as Sharon is and always will be home, I have always felt a bit disjointed and restless with the thought of staying put.

I have had two wonderful careers in this town. I have enjoyed sixteen years as a teacher and twenty plus years as a police officer. The experiences, the people, the relationships, are all precious to me. However, even with general success there has been an uneasy sense of not truly belonging. ​

A few years ago Ann Marie and I bought a nice vacation home in the wilds of Maine. It is a wonderful place of relaxation and solitude. However, after a few days, or sometimes weeks, I begin to miss something... I think it’s home. But when I get home, I start to miss Maine. I also miss Italy, Greece, or some other places I’ve never been to.

I loved Manteo, North Carolina, on the Outer Banks.  I thought that would be a place where I could fit in. It’s beautiful and the people were very friendly. Sadly, down deep, I know I would get restless there as well. I would eventually miss Sharon and Maine, but, right now, I miss Manteo…lol.

Dedication to a cause or purpose has been equally challenging. I have been both absorbed and intoxicated by music’s siren call. However, I always came short of giving myself to her as an ultimate and faithful lover. Music, as with most passions, is jealously unyielding in her need for utter and singular commitment. Oftentimes I would encounter the personalities of those that made the total commitment. How do they become so disciplined and singularly focused?  
 
Then again, maybe it’s just my human laziness. Perhaps, I was simply not willing to spend countless hours on the mechanics to get to the place of effortless expression?  However, it seems that so many untrained musicians find joy, true joy,  in the simple Saturday night fiddle soiree, compared to those that pursued the perfection of in-depth professional music studies. Unfortunately, I don’t play fiddle.

I sometimes have a wild dream of the future and imagine a time where we go to a concert not just to hear performers, but to perform as well.  Instead of lighting up our cell phones or applauding at the conclusion of the night, the “audience” psycho-kinetically creates a musical response, which is played back to the performers, kind of like the music sequence in Close Encounters where both aliens and earthlings connect through sympathetic musical tones. We would no longer be passive receptors, but participants in the magical dialogue of musical exchange. How cool would that be? Sounds like a plot line to a Vonnegut story.
 
Where is home? I love when the character Ben Rumson from the musical Paint Your Wagon, sings the song, I was Born Under a Wandering Star.
​
I was born under a wandrin' star
Mud can make you prisoner, and the plains can bake you dry
Snow can burn your eyes, but only people make you cry
Home is made for comin' from, for dreams of goin' to
Which with any luck will never come true
I was born under a wandrin' star
I was born under a wandrin' star

​​Finally, I like C. S. Lewis’s contention that our wandering, our restlessness, or sense that we are never quite home, is the exact proof that we indeed were not created for this world.  That thought does give me some sense of settlement and relief. But to again quote Ben Rumson;
 
            If I get to Heaven tie me to a tree
            Or I’ll begin to roam and soon you know where I will be….
 
The piano feels like home. Tie me to a piano and I’ll be sure to practice, even if I get restless. Then again, traveling through Italy with Stanley Tucci would be good.