I Actually Thought That You Could Always Go Home

This is one of those long-simmering blog posts, so bear with me if it rambles a bit. I will probably have to revisit the topic at some point, because I don't think I have this all sorted out in my head yet. But here it goes.

I've never been good at letting go, and seem to have a high capacity for forming attachments. Once, in the depth of therapy related to infertility, miscarriages and adoption, a counselor told me that she thought I could form an attachment to just about any child that came into my life (or cat, or dog, or fish, at that point). However, it seems unfair to also include places in that category, although why I resent this is unclear. Entire epics and religious works are dedicated to separation from significant places.

This isn't about Exodus (or Jeremiah or Ezekiel, my Hebrew Bible chronology is weak), though. In the past year family members have chosen to move, and for very good reasons. This meant gaining access to one house of my childhood, but also losing access to my grandparents' home. The depth of attachment to my grandparents' home surprised me greatly. I don't know why ... when I think about it, it is one of two places in my life that had not changed until recently. The phone number was the first number I ever called, back when you only needed to dial four digits. (No, I'm not that old, it was a very small community). When my parents split, that house was still there. When I came home from college: still there. When I moved back, bringing my future husband and a desire to really live in the place I had for so long called home, but rarely lived in: still there. Now, it will not be there for my children. I have a lot to be thankful for; my grandparents are still alive and we are close. But the place ... the spot where the peach tree was before it died, the garden of the weedy asparagus bed and the never-ending swiss-chard, the mysterious barn attic with boxes of treasure from previous chapters of my aunts, uncle's or parents' lives, the room where I pestered my teenage aunt and asked incessantly about roses from her latest beau, the dock on the lake, the lake itself where my father soaped off after coming home from work (smelling like oil & grease and the mysteries of cars that would not run), where we held night-time campfires and cook-outs and where I saw the smelt run ... it is not there for them, and it is no longer there for me. I feel selfish in wanting to mourn this loss, but that doesn't change the reality of the separation or my longing for a place I can no longer go to.

Part of it also means I feel my age. No longer just out of school or a young adult, I've entered the age of responsibility and moving on. But there will always be a part of me at that house and on that shore, and that part of me is eight, or ten, or six, and doesn't care about what my daily duties are or the very good reasons behind the move, my changed family, or new stages of life. I hope in leaving that place, I don't leave her, or forget the things that made me. And I hope the memories that my children make and that make them can carry them as well and as far.