Easter Sunday was a day of bright dresses and brighter laughter. The laughter hasn't faded one whit... if anything it's increased as we go through all the merriment of introducing my visiting college chum to all our old family jokes and stories, and try to fill these last few days before we return to school with as much fun as possible.

The bright dresses have been packed away, though, because Madam Winter has decided that she hasn't quite grown tired of our little mountain woods yet. Last night Lizzy and I turned in early, and when we woke late this morning the world had a new appearance. The muddy patches of a promised spring had been replaced by a fresh robing of white, and the flakes were swirling large outside the curtain-fringed bedroom windows.

There's no place like home after all. In this year's sojourn 'out in the wide world' I've felt compelled more than once to apologise for being so attached to this mountain and the sweet family that lives atop it. I am, after all, a 'grown up' at twenty years old, and shouldn't everyone give up home and family for new shores and new adventures by such a ripe old age? I'm an independent college girl, and surely getting misty-eyed because I hear a song that I used to play with my father is more appropriate to a child.

But now I am home, and as these vacation days draw to a close I remember why I've never apologised, no matter how sore the temptation, and why I never will. Perhaps my life here can look a little dull in contrast to the sophistication of college life. There's nary a formal dance or dinner here, and things aren't so spick-and-span tidy, and everything is far more rustic. But in the midst of all the baking of peanut butter muffins - with the appropriate touch of chocolate, of cours! - and rambles down to the Road of Time and sitting on the old windowseat daydreaming while the little boys tear through the house on their latest imaginary quest is the thing that elevates all other things to a new plane and sanctifies the simplest of things: Love.

There's Love in abundance back at my school, too, and I don't say that I'll be entirely sorry to be back. The pursuit of Truth and Knowedgle is exhausting, but I love it, and I love my companions on that quest. I love the arching corridors and quiet classrooms. I love the comfort of a brisk fire in the student lounge on the weekend evenings. I love the sight of the commons decorated and lit for a dance. I love the way the great oak tree on the plaza looks against the chapel after twilight. I love all the nooks and crannies of that dear campus, and feel it fast becoming a part of me.

But I can never feel as though I've 'moved on' from home or grown out of it. To me there's no reason to choose between two lives. No matter how many years go by and no matter how far away I go my home will always be a part of me. I know that whatever good I brought to the college I brought from home. I know that whatever ability I have to seek Truth I acquired at home. I know that if I wonder at anything on campus it's because I wondered first at the world around my home.

I can't lose it, I can't grow out of it, and I don't want to. I know that the idea of Home that fills all the memories of my childhood is something that will remain with me until I die... and even then it will be the closest thing to my heart, because death will be the first step to really coming Home at last. The dream and idea of Home is what I want to capture my soul so completely that it always remains the fixed goal at the end of the road, no matter where that road may twist and turn in the meantime.

A few more short days, and then I'll be on the train back to school, turning my mind once again to Latin and geometry. But Home will always be lurking in the background, and it will always be waiting for me. And I'll always go back to it.

Home is, I think, one of the sweetest words in the entire world. The past few days have been spent quietly with Christ, in reverent mourning and joyful anticipation. Now the forty days of prayer and fasting have passed, and in the silent vigil of this night I can feel the world patiently waiting for a glorious Dawn.

Easter is not the only thing that's been anticipated in this house, though, during these past few days. There's a young college chum who came home with me who has a blend of wistfulness and happiness in her eyes, and who falls asleep every night with a soft smile illumining her face. She knows that she is missed, and that going back to school means so much more... it will be going back to Someone.

Watching her makes me feel both young and old. Young, because I smile at every whimsical look that lights up her face whenever a certain subject of conversation comes up... and old because she reminds me of me during the wintry breaks of last semester, when I would fall asleep with a similar gentle contentment, and wait out my days in quiet anticipation. Old because there were a few brief moments of wonder and joy, and though even now some of the fallen petals are stirring around my feet from those breathless days I know that their fragrance is no more than fading memories.

These chilly starlit nights I've spent not so much in happily wistful dreams of the future as in reflection on the past. Orion is as bright as ever above my snow-dusted woods; but the three stars of his belt don't twinkle in the dancing and merry fashion they once did. They flicker as though they are on the verge of suddenly dying. "Already every star is sinking that was rising when I set out."

It's easy to see things from the perspective of the here and the now... to see yourself surrounded with sad and lonely what-might-have-beens and to believe that the autumn has come and the leaves are gold. But the sun is beginning to rise, and yonder stands an empty tomb.

Home is one of the sweetest words in the world. And there is one just as sweet, though it rings with a battle cry as it comes with the dawn: Hope.

The world is alive with such beauty now. The days are mild and pleasant, and the most exquisite scents are carried throughout campus by gentle winds which tend to loiter in the loveliest of places, such as the chapel gardens. The sun sets every even in a soft gold haze, and the shadows that the bell tower of the chapel cast are such that you can almost hear them pealing with joy and hope. The jasmine climbs and twines about the lampposts, the walls, and the railings, and the magnolia trees in the woods below are blooming in delicate shades of pink and purple.

My favourite by far are the hedges of honeysuckle which are just beginning to bloom. Their fragrance isn’t as elegant and refined as the others, and doesn’t speak so much of gentility and pure femininity... but they remind me of June, and chasing fireflies over large front lawns, or sitting on the front porch singing songs, or taking walks through the green woods, or baking cherry cobbler in the afternoon, or dancing, or waking early in the morning to ride far, far away over the hills. They remind me of quiet and home-y but beautiful things. They make me think of love and laughter.

There was a Philosophy class recently that I must confess I spent rather ill. Instead of dutifully following my classmates in circles I fell into daydreaming about my Home of Dreams and coming up a list of requirements for it. I don’t say that a house that fell short of my ideals couldn’t be loved and be home, but it couldn’t be the Home of Dreams. That Home requires the following:

A large front porch, adorned with all manner of comfortable chairs. It would be ideal for sitting and watching the children play while reading or sewing, and it would be perfect for setting out a table for tea when my girlfriends come over. It would have wind chimes, too, so one could lean over the railing on breezy days and listen to the fairy music and become lost in romantic fancies. And it would be a place of beautiful memories, because it would be the best place of all for sitting on the porch swing with Someone in the evening-time for talk and laughter about all manner of things.

It would have a kitchen garden with all my favourite home-y flowers in it. There would be charming little walkways in the garden and one or two benches for sitting and dreaming. Regal is the last thing it would be, and it would hardly be prim and proper. It would be orderly, but in a slightly wild and overgrown sort of way... it would be the kind of garden that the fairies would visit.

The kitchen would be cosier than anything, of course. It would be the heart of the home, where the children could patter about after me talking about this and that and where the music would playing and the spontaneous dancing would start. There would be a kitchen door for my girlfriends to slip in for some chatter and tea, and there would be charming and country-ish curtains on the windows... windows that looked out into my roguish garden.

There would be a fireplace for the wintry evenings, and it would be like the fireplace I grew up with. Sometimes we’d sit around it and talk, sometimes we’d sit around it and read, and sometimes my children’s daddy would stand on the hearth and read fairy-tales aloud to them while I sat rocking the baby and looking up at him with all the love and admiration I felt written clear for him to read on my face.

There would be honeysuckle everywhere... not just in my garden, but everywhere. It would be around the porch, and in the window box in my kitchen, and it would line the fence around the house. The smell of honeysuckle would be one of the things that made the deepest impression on the senses of anyone who came to the Home, so that they always thought of the two together.

There would be an abundance of books, but only the best kind. There would be no book that just filled space, but every one of them would have a reason for being there... because it was loved, because it was good, because it was wise, because it was great. There would be books in the living room and books in the bedrooms and books in the kitchen.

There would be a wooden floor that was ideal for dancing, and we would dance often. In a corner of that room would be a piano, and sometimes we would have live music. Like the March girls we would make particular use of it on Christmas Eve... we’d sing carols until midnight when we went to Mass.

Outdoors there would be an abundance of open space. We would never feel hedged in or pressed upon, but always free. There would be all sorts of enchanting places to discover, and magical woods and valleys to gypsy in to the heart’s content. Our own front lawn would be nice and wide, so that the children would have plenty of room to run and play. We would have an orchard for dreaming and reading in.

All these things would just be parts to contribute to the whole of the atmosphere... it would be an atmosphere of beauty and joy. Laughter and Love would pervade every part of life, and by that I mean God.

---written October 25th, 2009

There was a sudden twang of late October in the air tonight. As I made my way back to Monica’s after the Rosary the winds began to pick up, and the great oak by the stairway began to wave and crackle its branches, looking suddenly alive and dancing in a powerful but friendly way. The gusts blew the leaves down and around, and they went skipping from stair to stair and raced up the pathway twirling about one another. The jack-o-lanterns sitting on the bench just outside the gate added to the atmosphere, and a little mischievous spirit came upon me. I wanted to go out wandering and look for the ghosties and ghoulies that are surely dancing in the winds tonight... but the hard reality of an early dish shift tomorrow morning compelled me to abandon late night forays into the land of weird magic. Alas that it isn’t Saturday night, with time to spare for such adventures. There will be strange creatures enough at the Halloween Dance next weekend, I’m sure, but they can’t compare with the wonders to be found in dark rambles with no other company but the imagination.

My Math tutor returned my paper with the comment that I should continue to write in my free time. Free time is perhaps the most luxurious thing afforded to a student on the four-year adventure in the liberal arts. But the ache of fatigue isn't the only thing I've felt during my first year of this journey... I've felt also the ache of beauty, an ache which won't be in the slightest alleviated until I've attempted to express it in words.

I'm afraid my scribblings here might not be the sort of thing that my tutor envisioned when he made his recommendation. At the end of a long day I haven't the energy to contemplate in writing the ins-and-outs of the curriculum. At the end of the day it's dreams and fancies that occupy my thoughts, and they keep me enthralled until another morning and another Latin class dawn in my life. But I do think there's just as much potential for wonder in whimsy as there is in the circle.

My pen has been rather unused of late, so I don't know what the chronicles of the next three-and-half years will look like. How much will be fact and how much will be fiction is also difficult to say. The wild winds of imagination will blow me wither they will, I suppose, and I'll simply try to capture in words some of the sights I'm sure to see along the way. I do have a firm determination, however, to faithfully write at somewhat regular intervals until the spring of 2013, when one journey will be finished and, I hope, many more adventures will be in the making.

For now, though, there's the ascent of this first mountain, and the faithful records of it to be kept.