Everyday Canvas

May 11

For "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" 
Prompt “Where we belong is often where we least expect to find ourselves—a place that we may have willed ourselves to forget, but that the heart remembers forever.” Emily Giffin, Where We Belong
How many places have you felt you belonged? Write about them.

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Places I’ve been in are more than self-evident and static backdrops, sets, or stages on which I happened to exist. See that I didn’t say “I’ve been to” but I said, “I’ve been in.” This means one can visit many places but the sense of belonging happens with other elements rather than the city, country, suburbs, or wilderness backdrop.

As such, I’ve been to many places in the USA, Europe, and the Near East. The one place I felt I really belonged to was the three-story, old clapboard house I grew up in. Then during my junior high and high school years, since both high-schools were in the same complex, I had thought I belonged there, as I had truly loved that school. Then the following year, when I attended the alumna meeting, the place felt like someone else’s school. I didn’t belong there anymore but to the university I was attending. Well, somewhat, I thought. I wasn’t going to be fooled again.

Later on, when I went abroad to many places, while married after a while, I felt an affinity to many places, but I never felt I belonged with them. It is true that although a few places were inhospitable and the people in them I feared were out to get me, I’d say 99% of the places were nice and the people in them, usually, very friendly.

Yet, I felt I belonged with my extended family sometimes, and my husband all the time, until he passed away. So, in my case, I think that sense of belonging has more to do with people than places. I guess, in my case, a place has to have beautiful people attached to it, rather than just the scenery and the topography.

For: "Space Blog" 

Prompt: From A Cassandra. ’s "Invalid Item" 

This is a beautiful poem describing cherry blossoms.

My best experience of cherry blossoms happened a few decades ago when we visited Washington DC. I believe it was the first week of April, then. The view was something like light pink tufts of cotton covering the branches, exuding hope and happiness to the viewers, be it short-lived like the cherry-blossom season itself as the flowers disappear quickly giving way to fruit in the making.

I heard this year and last, due to Covid, even though they let in a few people walk in, they put up a fence around the tidal basin and closed the roads leading to the tidal basin.

I’ve also read about about the cherry blossom festival in Japan, but I doubt they could do any better than the USA in opening them to public during the last two years. Who knows, when Covid is history, maybe one day I’ll live to see the Japan’s beautiful version of cherry blossoms, too.