My parent’s house is not a place where joy lives.
This is not to say that there is no love, respect, nor laughter at times. But there is no music, and there is a peculiar dust on the floor. The remnants, a powdering of eggshells after years of being walked (ever so cautiously) on. Humor here is sarcastic or they are pranks. Always in good jest, but with the potential and power to cause harm. The debates are not over ideas and dreams, but behavior and expectation. Friction is frequent and unnecessary, arguments are personal.
Over the years I’ve learned to think differently. I, in this way, am my mother’s child. We are inherent, unapologetic, optimists. My brother and my father sit somewhere else on this gamut of trust and hope. So when I told my brother that I was visiting our parents, he became understandably agitated.
I don’t know where he would call "back home," and until a week ago, I wasn’t sure where I would call home either.
I should have moved out of Atlanta ages ago. My brother did. And so did my parents. A recent trip to Nicaragua finally made it obvious. Atlanta was not my home. I was ready. I left my loft. A friend and her sons moved in, and I became a landlord. Friends across the city offered rooms and couches for me to stay, proving my eventual departure to be more difficult than expected. When asked where I was moving to, my answer, coupled with a reflexive shrug of my shoulders, became an automatic “my backpack...? The world...? ...Away.” I knew where I wanted to be, and though I could imagine it on a map, I couldn’t satisfactorily place it for anyone else. It isn’t so much a location as it is a place in my heart, I knew I’d been there before. The world, I recognize, is hardly a destination and my backpack is hardly a home. But for me, for now, away sufficed. My closest friends knew not to ask. They knew they would know when they saw me there. My parents never asked, and i was once again reassured of their trust and profound love for me.
And as I whiled away my last weeks in Atlanta, I began to see that I’d overstayed my welcome. I’d stayed a week and some days with a friend’s mother, who, after the years we’d known one another, was a friend herself, if not family, in her own right. She’s the kind of person I can -- and do-- vent to, helping me sort my concerns, and would bill me for therapy if I wasn't already reciprocating in my own way. One evening over dinner, after I’d reached a moment of near panic and overwhelm, she looked at me and said “Laura, you need to go home.”
Only, I thought I was home. I was living just a few miles from the house I grew up in -- but I knew what she meant. My parents had moved, and in a sense, brought my “home” to Roanoke, Virginia. Ironically, the same place I was born, and spent the first several months of my life. I’d been to visit them once for Thanksgiving, and though I knew I'd always be welcome, I hadn’t considered it home.
Less than a week later I piled my dog and several boxes of miscellaneous items into my car and set off for Virginia. I had a few art supplies, books, clothes, rollerblades, and roller skates (I don't know why I have both, I don't really do either). The drive was long, we left late and stopped for a midnight nap along the way. When we got to my folks’ house, Lewa ran straight for their gate, my father helped unload my car, left for lunch with his friend, and I took a nap.
I was physically and emotionally exhausted. Ready for a week of home.
Home, where there is no music. Home, where the palpable tension is not from spite, but because of love. Home. Where the heart is.
Comments