I always liked Tom Petty’s song, “Refugee”. He has in it the line, “You don’t have to live like a refugee” and I have been singing it to myself repeatedly. Oh, I wish the line were true for me! I am living like a refugee.

I am not appealing for sympathy, because it wouldn’t be deserved given that I chose to live as I live, in the high country of Western North Carolina. But I will say that having had to leave home quickly and unexpectedly in mid-December due to a weather front moving in that might have locked me in through the holidays, and now not knowing when I might get back due to a huge weather front moving in that may last for a week – I viscerally feel the plight of refugee status, even to this very modest extent. That story has always been an extremely sad one, a horrible concept, people having to flee from home. But it all remained somewhat conceptual in my mind. Not so any more.

This has something to teach me. The circumstance and feelings must be happening for a reason. “My skin is my home,” a dream once told me. Somehow, now, that skin feels like a thin home. God bless refugees everywhere in the world.