Returning Home

Its Saturday, the Saturday sandwiched between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and we're back home - our childhood home - taking advantage of the long weekend to visit family and friends we haven't seen in awhile. I'm up early, no surprise, the open window of the bedroom allowing the wonderful sounds of Spring to filter through untouched, the robins and sparrows singing morning songs, the dog across the back-lane barking quietly to be let back in, a lone car driving past in the distance, a small prairie town slow to stir on a holiday weekend.

 The cat and I have emerged from our room, him eager to eat, me trying silently to find the essentials to make coffee in a kitchen that isnt mine, yet isnt quite foreign either, belonging to Karen's mom, and I succeed after a few wrong turns and locate the paper filters without waking the house. Missions accomplished, cat and I head to the front room and establish our personal territories, me in the green chair and ottoman beside the picture window, cat now on my lap, paws crossed, alert and attentive, but able to sleep should the lack of stimulation warrant.

 The sun is slowly rising, a few wisps of cloud linger from the storms that flirted with us overnight, the streets and driveways still dry. Its cooler this morning, great sleeping weather with the bedroom window open, if you can ignore the first birds of the day, but its Easter and a time for renewal and rebirth, and so the day beckons to make best use of the silence.

 Returning 'home' means different things to different people, depending of course on your age and stage in life: the recently graduated will soon be coming back from University in the cities, starting work in summer jobs to help pay for next September's schooling, returning to familiar rooms and routines, families happy to have their children back under the same roof once more, clinging to the remaining strands of the fraying family unit. Those that have moved on and started families of their own elsewhere, return for brief visits and for cherished memories in the making, the stuff of future photo albums and remember-whens. 

But while the house and location are still the same, the rooms - perhaps the same as the ones you occupied while growing up, or maybe thats now the sewing room or craft room, and now you're banished to the guest room in the basement or some second floor, the same room aunts and uncles share when they stop by to visit - the rooms have been repurposed in any case, no longer 'yours' but still you've got first dibs, and a childhood of memories linger in the old wood panelled walls, and tiny closets, the wooden rods grooved and worn from years of sliding wire hangers, of expanding wardrobes and style changes, today the home to spare summer dresses and fall and winter coats, but with just enough room left for your things when you return.

 Theres a slower pace to this place now, the storefronts on Main Street have changed since you cruised the streets on Friday nights, looking for friends and something to do. The old facades have been updated, some have been torn down, others remain unchanged, decaying while providing a glimpse of their past. Storefront signs now boast the sons and daughters of the original shop and office owners, businesses that still operate under the names you remember, now run by new owners, the inevitable pace of progress moving forward.

 We delude ourselves when we move from home that we're off to build a better life than the one that raised us into who we are today, with our bigger houses, more toys, and grander lifestyles than the ones we left behind, proving to ourselves and the rest of the world that we demand and deserves respect for who we are today, despite where we started, running from the small towns and little opportunities to the cities with their bright lights and constant hum, multitude of choices and options and promises galore. Like our parents before us who left farms and rural homesteads for a better life in the towns, we're doing what we know, moving on and moving up, but we know its just a game.

 We can pretend on these long weekends that we aren't from this place anymore, that we're different people somehow, with bigger and different problems served by a different and larger distant population, but when you stand out in that back yard now, the one that now seems so much smaller than when you were a child and days lasted forever, and you watch the neighbors working in their yards, tending to the massive garden plots that back onto that common lane, the piles of yard clippings and compost standing there waiting for a turn with the fork, or you listen to the familiar ticking of that anniversary clock in the front room, its pendulum keeping perfect time, you know its all a grand illusion, that while time and distance may have taken you from this place, this place was never taken from you, and in these tree-lined streets and wide deep lots still beats your heart, the seeds of who you've become were sewn here all those years ago.

 The boy and cat see this place as slower and more quiet, with different things to see and do, and memories here from visits past but they each prefer the familiar comforts and routines of the certainty they find when we return back home. And you know what? So do we. Home is always good for the soul, no matter how much its changed.