A Journey Home

2011 finds me back where I was born and lived until early adulthood. It is an interesting thing to return home. Of course, no one ever truly returns home. What is familiar is changed somehow. I, too, am different, and the scenes of my childhood have blurred into this present reality. Sometimes, I find myself driving down a road that takes me to a place I recognize but don't remember. Or, to a place I remember but don't recognize. A new jag in the route. A lost canopy of oaks that stood on either side. Full sun replaces the filtered shadows from the ancient overarching limbs and leaf that I remember. I think back to when I squinted through that stretch of road, in and out of light and shade. Now sun blazes across an open empty field, unrelenting and bright in its intensity. There is a new house on the distant hillside, already well established with large pines and draping yews. It became comfortable there without me.

My memory page is filled with more than landscape. There are the people, too. Some have moved on. Just as I did. But, some have stayed. With those who remained here, we have re-introduced ourselves, picked up where we left each other long ago. Could it really be years, not minutes since last we spoke? Grown older, they have altered their roles, matured in who they are. The children are mothers now. The mothers are grandmothers. The teachers, no longer naive and new to their craft, are masters of the classroom. Revered. We all have changed. I am not the girl who moved away.

As I think about the starts and stops and turns in the path that led me back here, I am reminded of Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken - so well read and quoted, it has become cliché, almost. The symbol of Frost's "two roads diverged in a wood" remains relevant, however. We make choices throughout our lives that shape our existence. Those choices often appear equally attractive but in the end result in a large difference of experience. As opposed to those roads "not taken" I reflect more often on those that I did take. The former suggests regret. I do not regret my choices, some that led to pain or difficulty, yes, but all that gave me friendships, connections, and the nuance of who I am. I like where I have traveled. It has made all the difference.

Now in my new "old" setting, I turn to the pen again. The limbo of the past couple years fades and a renewed spirit of adventure and memory-making is before me. I am home.