Quarter after Five

Just now I heard my neighbor come home and heard the banging of his garbage cans as he moved them from the curb after garbage pick-up day. Maybe it's because I bought the home that my Mom and Dad owned from the time I was 14, or maybe it's because the quality of the sunshine at the end of summer always invokes a sort of physiological nostalgia in me, but that sound instantly transported me back in time and made me feel it was my Dad coming home from work. Apparently, he would get the cans in on garbage day afternoons, too, or so my body just said.

What is this feeling in my lower abdomen that is such a mixture of pain and joy? Of longing, a deep homesickness, and simultaneously of completeness, of security, of love? Is it because as a child I knew safety, that I was accepted and I belonged in this one place, in my family in our home? I don't know, but I hope my son has the opportunity to feel that some day.