Nomad Online

Today a station billboard asked me where I felt at home.

I was rushing and didn’t see the gigantic thing. The doors of this particular train to our neighbourhood can close any minute and you never know when your minute is up.

I sat down on the nearest seat when we reached the carriage and waited for the train to move.

“If you were born in one place…” my husband started reading.

“What are you doing?”

“Over there,” he lifted his chin towards the other side of the station.

And there it was. I almost missed the sign because I didn’t take the time to observe the world around me.

I’m not sure what they’re hoping to gain from this ad I can’t quite understand, but they’re right. “Where do you feel at home?” is a better question.

“But this is my day! Not your day!” my husband protested when I took the photo.

I had grand plans to visit Westminster and take photos of the Abbey before I got sidetracked.

I remembered my niece’s birthday was coming up in a few weeks and I wanted to give her something I made. Instead of hunting for that perfect image for the blog project, I started writing a fairytale.

I forgot about time. It just disappeared as I started writing. Before long my opportunity to go on a photo walk passed, and it was soon time for our son to come home from school.

My husband was doing the jigsaw puzzle I bought him for Christmas while I wrote about knights and magic, rockstars and kings.

“Don’t you do my puzzle,” he warned. “This is MY puzzle and I’M going to finish it. I’m not sharing it with my family.”

“Oh, my back!” he’d then complain as he hunched over our dining table, sifting through the tiny pieces.

I found him rather cute. Curmudgeonly, but cute.

John Wise, also known as Mad John, passed away last week and the neighbourhood is in mourning. He was 84 years old. The eldest of four. Never married. Had no children. And managed to win the hearts of many residents here.

They say he always travelled with his bike. They say he had a huge beard. He wore shorts and bandanas in all sorts of weather. And never failed to greet you with a smile.

He may have been eccentric, but they say he was a legend of the neighbourhood.

I saw floral tributes outside the train station in his memory. Some residents had held a vigil for him the day before. “Thank you for your joy, John” someone wrote.

I wish I had known him. He sounded like a character. A bonkers, but kind man. I think I may have liked him.

I do know a small part of me fell in love with my neighbourhood today. It’s not the poshest around Wimbledon, but it opened its heart to a crazy old man with no family of his own, and cherished him.

My son and I visited the Science museum today.

“Look mum! There’s home!,” my son pointed to the globe in the space exhibit.

There it was. I almost cried. At that moment, home suddenly felt so far away. And I missed it.

That’s a good thing I told myself as I soothed the ache away. It means I loved the place and the place loved me. I was thankful it was generous enough to adopt a nomad like me, give me a home and call me one of her own.

-1 degree this morning. It was chilly. My husband headed for work and my son and I headed to church.

Today the senior minister talked about the common trap we can all fall into of dividing people into “somebodies” and “nobodies”.

We looked at the passage in Matthew where Jesus’ disciples were jockeying for position in the kingdom of heaven. Who was going to be the best and sit at Jesus’ right side in heaven, they asked.

The humble, was Jesus’ reply and rebuke. Forget about who was going to be what in heaven, they had to humble themselves like a child to even enter that Kingdom of heaven.

“The door is so low, we have to enter it on our knees,” our minister preached. “We need to realise that we are not the master of our own fates.”

Instead, we needed to give up our pride and turn to Him like a child. For the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven is the one who is the least.

We were reminded that God himself led by example. Giving up His status to become a man to be humiliated on the cross. All to bring us home again and again when we are lost.

If this is how He treats us, our minister said, we should treat others the same way. We should all be equals here at church, not divided into “somebodies” and “nobodies”.

I am a “nobody” in this country. I have no job. No connections. But I am so thankful none of this matters at the foot of the cross. And that my worth is found in Him who loves me.

Caught up with good friends from Australia today. We met at the Design Museum while our son was at school.

It was lovely to see them.

Loving the early afternoon sunlight streaming through our window. I was hungry and ready to eat, but the last thing I wanted to do was move away from that beautiful light.

I curled up on our seat and bathed in it for a little longer.

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Project 2020 is a weekly roundup of images. It aims to capture moments of joy, pleasure, and thankfulness that are found on any given day. It’s an attempt at remembering the good things and being grateful for them. Thank you for stopping by and I wish you a wonderful day.