They make me homesick.
We went to Colorado in December 2007, to see my sister married. We drove, and the farther East we went, the more open the scenery became. On the last day of our trip, I remember walking out of a hotel in Wyoming, heading through the frigid morning to our car. I scanned the scenery, and was amazed that I could see for miles, nothing but prairie until the line between sky and land was divided by a mountain. Unbidden, the thought, "I'm home" rang out in my mind, over and over. A litany, almost shouting the answer to the question my husband has been asking me for the last five or six years: " Where do you want to live when I retire?"
Now I know that I've been away for far too long.
My upbringing was dysfunctional and painful enough that when I failed out of college and joined the Navy, I couldn't get far enough away from home. For a while, my parents didn't even know where I was, and I liked it that way. Even after my mother became sober and made amends, I never really felt like there was anyone there at home for me. There weren't many happy memories there for me, but the few that I did have always involved nature. To this day, I have to sleep with something covering my eyes, because it was so dark, and so quiet where we lived- I finally managed to ditch the earplugs ten years after I left. Our house was at the top of a rather steep hill, carved into the side of a deep valley. We were up high enough that we could see for a very long way in either direction. The only sound at night was the wind in the conifers and aspens that surrounded our house and blanketed the sides of the hills. The deep bass undertone was almost an ominous rumble, but I never felt frightened by it. I found the sheer enormity of it comforting somehow. I could lay in my bed next to the window and see stars that were unsullied by the unnatural orange of streetlights-there were none. Sometimes I could make out features in the landscape outside by their light alone. One year, I even saw the Aurora Borealis. It was amazing.
Sometimes when I awoke in the morning, deer were eating the grass in the side yard, and in the meadow next to our property. I also loved that I could see for miles. When I left home, those things had taken a backseat to my need for escape.
It was many years before my relationship with my family was even close to what anyone would call normal, and it is only that way now by the Grace of God, and HIS power to help us learn how to forgive.
So, now I know that I want to live close to home when we can finally choose where we live. I am always at the mercy of the Lord's will, though. I pray that it is what He has in mind for us. I really want to raise my kids there.
We went back to my hometown last June, before Sparky shipped out for Afghanistan. I took photos of the kids sliding on the same slide in the park that I played on as a child. That was just about the only thing familiar left in the park.
We drove around the same streets upon which I rode my bicycle as a child. I was reminded of 1 Corinthians 14: 11&12. "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." The rose colored glasses of youth, the darker, face- obscuring lenses of young adulthood, the changes maturity, marriage, and childbirth bring: full circle, in a way.
Everything seemed so....overgrown. The trees were thirty years smaller back then, and shaded the sidewalks perfectly from the summer sun, making an ideal place to play dolls, hopscotch, jumprope.....all gone away. Nobody plays on the sidewalks any more. Some of them are barely even passable, the tree roots turning a leisurely stroll into an ankle injury.
A trip to the cemetary brought many memories and refreshed grief long forgotten. Friends, killed in automobile accidents on the treacherous roads, my grandmother and grandfather, my baby sister. I am so thankful to know that some of the people I lost in my youth are waiting for me in Heaven; we have so much catching up to do.
The saying, "you can never really go home" became so patently obvious after this last visit, yet the area itself, with the open prairie, the foothills, dotted with scub oak that turns the countryside into an exquisite patchwork quilt in the fall, the delicate spiderwebs of snow on the on the spindly branches of barren winter trees and of course the Huajatollas themselves.....the beautiful Spanish Peaks, and the Sangre de Cristo Range to the West....it's still home, and it always will be.
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