Home Sweet Home

It has been an odd few days since I returned from my friends' house on the river. Like me, they relate quite easily to the dead - a good thing since that landscape, the Whitings Neck of the Potomac river, is thick with ghosts. After they bought the house and began spending time there, the first layer of ghostly presence they perceived was the river of Civil War dead. It's not surprising since the Antietam/Sharpsburg battlefield is only a few miles away.

There are layers of ghosts that somehow got stuck on their way from point A to point B, including one Victorian ghost who shows up in dreams, saying she needs horsehair. I saw her over the weekend, but one of my friends had already dreamed about her. There are Indian ghosts, too, who come and go, depending on the situation. Things move around in their house, lights flicker or go off, or - as happened over the weekend - in the middle of the night while we were all fast asleep, a light turned itself on, waking up one of my friends. One time they were doing the dishes when a bell in the other room started ringing. Tom turned to Rod and said, "An angel has just gotten his wings." They laughed and kept washing dishes.

These are my people.

For these friends, as is true for me, this is completely normal, and for them as for me, quite entertaining. It is such a relief to spend time with other people who sense the dead. I don't feel as if I have to keep explaining myself as I do with many DC friends. I live in a city in which rationality is highly valued, where emotions, sensitivities and anything "woo-woo" is frowned upon or made fun of. Sometimes I chafe at the way people dismiss my world view, other times I don't care. But I surely love spending time with like minded folks, hence re-entry into cerebral DC can be kind of a shock.

Ah, am I whinging? I will stop right now. I love my beautiful, powerful, wounded city including my friends who value rationality over everything.

Life is good and I am grateful. And there's no place like home.

Shalom.