"This ain't my home," Annie said, voice low and sad.
"Honey, you fit in everywhere. Thai wat, Catholic cathedral, Little Tokyo, grimy downtown Los Angeles, museums, parks, the beach, don't matter where you are, you seem to blend right in, as if you walked and sat and thought there every single day."
"But none of them are home. To truly fit, then you have to feel as if that place, more than any other similar or different spaces, is the right space for you. It's the more than that gets me, every single time. I seldom find a place where I immediately think, no way, I do NOT belong here - they exist and they are seriously unpleasant, but they are few and far between. But fewer and far betweener are places where I think, yes, this place is where I should be, more than that other place, more than most other places, I can sigh, take off my shoes, feel the grass tickle my feet and think, I'm home. I'm just a middle-aged woman sliding into the golden years who still doesn't have a clue what she wants to be when she grows up. How can you know where home is when you don't even know who you are?"
"I get that. Everybody needs a friend and a friend that's close by - not a friend who is always available to chat in one's imagination. I'm just what you think your best friend would say if she was sitting here drinking coffee with you instead of sitting on the other side of the continent."
"Don't remind me."
A cat nudged her, letting her know she was sitting squarely in his home and human pets are made to be useful. "Pet me," he meowed. She did, thinking once again that she had too many damn cats. All cats and dogs and no people drinking coffee or tea or wine or calling up to see if she'd like to go for a walk (she would) or go out to lunch (second lunch, not a bad idea) or just chat on the phone. It's cats and dogs, all the way down, and they never talk philosophy.
"Maybe I'll luck out and be a cat in my next life, no matter what Snowball said," she added with an interior mutter, "and I'll fit and be home because, if cats can do one thing better than almost anything else, it's make a home.
"Jack Lewis maintained, that we don't feel at home here because here is not our home," her imaginary friend offered up.
"As if Heaven would take a perplexed Witch without a coven," Annie snorted, "Jack Lewis isn't at the pearly gates after all, it's Peter holds that job. Although ... Peter was keen on the nature magic of calming storms and conjuring fish that Jesus trotted out without so much as blinking ... maybe I would...”
"It’s that kind of observation that gets you into trouble,” Elnora cut in with a snort. “Maybe you would squeeze in through that window Mother Mary famously opens; but, you know, you'd feel sorely out of place in Heaven.”
"I suspect so," Annie laughed.
