Home Again, Home Again?

Where is home again?

I write tonight from my rental house on the little island by the bridge.  The one where I grew up.  The name of the island even has Little in it, and yet despite its small size, it has distinct neighborhoods.  And my rental is not in the neighborhood I grew up in.  It is at least three miles and 15 years away -  it feels as distant, as alien as the moon. 

After rehearsal I hit the road for a walk for two very good reasons: it was beautiful out, and I was terrified.  I went to a familiar place, a public, quarried, graffitied, lookout, makeout place.  A safe place.  A palimpsest place.  I walked in the mossy lane, longer than I remember; I climbed up the rocky slope, shorter than I remember.  But at the top, the encircling view was- for all intents and purposes- the same.  The play of light familiar on the green of the bridge, the blue of the water, the reflective gray of the mudflats- the mudflats that had earlier caressed my nose as I crossed the causeway whispering "you would know us anywhere til your dying day and beyond and we are your childhood, and we will always be right here fragrant and exposed of a low tide, longer than you will live"- the spruce, the roofs, the sunset- all where I had left them.  Long ago and far away.

On younger trips up the hill, there was something I never noticed, never named, never saw from this vantage point til tonight.  To the south, beyond the big island, stretching its shoulders on the horizon- was a tall island.  Flattened by distance, it was still a profile I would know anywhere.  Home.  Across miles of crisp autumn air, and in the fast fading light, it was there for me to look at.   On that island, there's a red and white Ford pickup parked at the town landing by the tomalley shop.  There is a gray cat in a saltbox house at the base of another rock outcropping, a cat who is trying to figure out how to break into the new automatic feeder.  There's a black and white cat who will sleep and eat in the cab of a model T truck.  There's a journal and a box of chocolates on a table, that I forgot to take.  Tomatoes on vines in the garden- tomatoes I should have picked.

Two thousand miles- to the North, to the West, Dave is in a place I cannot even picture.  There's moss, I know.  And moose, he hopes.  I have neighbors here.  But I don't know them.  In that journal, on the table, Dave wrote "think of me, and I will be there."  (I paraphrase, since I can't refer to it, damn me and my rush to get out the door because of my reluctance to get out of bed)  So I called him to mind, and I walked with him a while.  Someday he will walk with me here, and I won't feel lonely.  He'll probably cook, and I will go to bed on something more nourishing than a Slim Fast shake and a frozen enchilada.  He'll talk to me, as comforting as the smell of mudflats, and the terror of a new job and life will diminish.  I will look into his face, and feel at home, because in his eyes I am not only known but welcome.

So yes, I came back- as many people don't.  To the same island, the same school- but for all that I might know some names, some faces, it is not comfortable, not home.  Not yet.  Sometimes home is provided (generally in a smile), sometimes home is something you just have to work at.  Again and again.

I'll crawl into bed tonight with a book, my faith (work+time=it'll be okay), and the image of this Friday when I will go home to the patient red truck,  my cats, the tomatoes, the journal and the chocolates.  Glad to see the neighbors I know.  And I will dream of next Friday, when Dave will walk toward the baggage claim in Portland- coming home to me.