Song of the Mockingbird: My Journey with Josefina

I think I’m ready to go home, I tell Josefina. She asks if I’m sure, and I nod. But even as I do, I wonder which home I mean: Josefina’s, my modern adobe house with Mom and Dad and Henry, or Chicago, the only place that’s ever felt like home before.

Then I realize, as Josefina and I walk down the sloping hills, that when I told her I want to go home, the image in my mind wasn’t the rancho or Chicago. It was our Santa Fe house, with the high desert around it.

I see what Dad means about the beauty of the desert now. The land doesn’t feel too hot or dusty or empty anymore. This is Josefina’s home, and maybe it’s mine too. I wonder if I can make a life here, the way she has. It’s time to see.