Homecoming
Tuesday, July 24th, 2007When are you coming home next? It was my mom, asking the question I dread most.
See, the thing is, I know she means well, but I don’t live there anymore. In fact, I haven’t ever lived there. They moved away, years ago. Which isn’t a big deal except that for some reason I’m bothered by her thinking of their home as my own. I wish it didn’t bother me. But there it is.
And yet sometimes, I wish I really could go “home.” The home that I grew up in, with the driveway I used to draw hop-scotch squares on and the really good climbing tree out back. Where there were geraniums to plant each spring, wild raspberries to pick every summer, and snow forts in the winter.
But like any home, it wasn’t perfect and my memory reminds me that I left nine years ago and never moved back for a reason. I can’t say that I regret it, but I wish I’d known then that my childhood and all of the good parts that were there would thereafter be behind me. I wish that I had known then that I’d never really get to go home again. Even just to visit.
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