Displacement

My heritage is Cajun. I learned French as a kid and can still understand most of it now, used to write poetry about missing the great big waters during my teen angst years. That bit is ironic given my anxiety over being on a boat in deep water.

Perhaps it is in my blood though to long for a homeland. The Cajuns were themselves displaced from France and then Acadia.It is an interesting history. The few times I have felt at home have been in Louisiana, now and then I will get a whiff of the air and long for the damp chill of a Louisiana Christmas, or end up cooking chicken stock overnight and long for a pot of slow cooked gumbo.

I have BeauSoleil Avec Michael Doucet on Pandora right now. This music makes me feel at ease and creative and so many other things.

I know that one of the things that made me fall in love with our farm was that to get to it the highway rolls through a marsh and a river greenbelt that is very swamp like. There are crawfish mounds in the pasture and a flat bottom boat put up near the dock. I feel at home here in a way that I did not in the city, but a meme I was tagged for on facebook asked, "if you could live anywhere, move there, where?" Immediately I thought of the swamps with the dark, shadowy pines and cypress near Iowa, Louisiana. Ironic. It is pronounced (I-Oh-Way not I-Oh-Wah.)

So as I am up late again while my employers server is down AGAIN, I got to thinking about displacement. I carry this place in my heart, home is where the heart is, and I make my home where I am, where my family is. Luckily we have facebook and the Internet to stay connected, to strengthen bonds faint from distance. There is much to be grateful for.

Tomorrow: Gumbo.