Easter eggs and toilets

I have a full cup of coffee, a lazy Louisiana sunrise and a lap full of cats fighting for my attention. It's a beautiful day. My heart is full after talking late into the night about everything with The Momma. My gypsy soul is quiet after spending a glorious 9 hours in the car enjoying the slightly impromptu drive south, and I simply have time to reflect.

We talked about Portugal of course, we talked about my recent change of decisions regarding my future, we talked about people, changes, Cedar Grove, the kids, the early mornings we now both enjoy, even toilets. It was much needed soothing medicine for my soul.

While we were talking in the comfortable house that I see as my home away from home I was hit with a mental image. These trips, while some might see them as me just running, mean more to me than that. I’ve struggled to explain what they actually mean, because I wasn’t exactly sure. I hit on it a little in the last post, but didn’t actually understand myself, what I was talking about.
This image that hit me, was of me as a small child running around in an Easter dress trying to find Easter eggs that had been hidden by me, but forgotten from years of neglect. When I found one, like all small children, my eyes lit up and my voice got higher. I danced around pleased with myself until someone called me over to help open the egg. In those milliseconds as I was waiting for the egg to be opened and discover what was hidden in my new treasure, I saw excitement and longing. Desire and hope. Then the egg was open and those feelings spilled over. Inside was what I was longing for, a piece of my heart. These travels are to reclaim my heart. Not to take it away in all senses, but to revisit it. To tell that piece of my heart and those attached to it that I love them.

As I was thinking last night, I decided it’s a very Portuguese thing to do. In Portuguese to tell someone that you love them, you say te quero. Translated literally it means I want you. If you tell someone that you love them you are saying you want them. If you don’t spend time on that relationship you are essentially saying you don’t want them and hence do not love them. So my travels, while I joke and credit them to my gypsy spirit are really deeper than that. They are to find my loves, my wants, and my heart.

With all this in mind, I was hit last night with where I have to go next. This one is a little closer to home, an exact 59 miles from the Jewell parking lot to theirs. It’s a road, much like the one to Louisiana that I have traveled many many times, but this one is a little more frightening. This Easter egg, requires a little more. I already have taken the egg back from this person, but it requires a little fixing up and a good cleaning before it belongs in my basket.
Until then my basket has a small multicolored easter egg sitting firmly in the bottom. It’s full of coffee, children’s happy screaming, peace from a porch, southern cooking, and that slow southern drawl.

And all the words that I am left with are, te quero Shreveport.