Thursday, September 22, 2011

Go Home

You have left so many times now that I have half forgotten how many goodbyes we've said. Some with slammed doors. Some with tears. Some with silent prayers and fare thee wells. But always with love, even if that love wore a different mask.

And you have come home.

But now you say you are leaving again. My heart crushes beneath the weight of your words because no matter how much I want, I know I can't make it perfect for you here. I am fighting too many wars for you to luxuriate in what keeps your peace. Perhaps it is best. Perhaps it is right. Perhaps it is time you made your last journey through this doorway toward your own. And perhaps I already hear the solemn echoes you leave behind in your empty space.

You can never go home again.

You can always go home again.

Which is true. One? The other? None? All? Where is home anyway.

Thomas Wolfe said, you can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time — back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.

Your home began inside me, and even as you took your first breath separate from my own, I vowed I would always be your safe harbor. Forever and ever. Have I broken my promise? Failed you again? Or have we finally realized your safest harbor is the one you build for yourself.

Go into the world and grab hold. Break it like a wild stallion and ride it until you can go no further. Then lay your head down.

You know, none of us are ever really home - no matter the door or how many times the key turns. Not until the rhythm of our being goes still. Then, and only then, can we each go home.

4 comments:

  1. Wow Alix... That's some powerful writing. Hope everything is okay.
    xoxo jj

    ReplyDelete
  2. That is so beautiful and so sad. Sending you peace...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very powerful, and very well written. You express so many feelings that I cannot. I hope that there is now a peace over your home, and that those who need to, have started their own.

    noexcuses

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes - very true. I myself subscribe to the sentiments of Robert Frost in "Death of the Hired Man": - that home is where, when you go there, they have to take you in. You sound like home to this person, as far as I can see. Note that Frost does not say that home is a comfortable place. Other peoples' homes alway look so - well, homey! Just before retirement I returned to the town of my youth. Other than being where I actually now live, and somewhat comfortable on that account, it is SO not the home I wanted and expected. I knew I should not have put off reading Wolfe's novel... Turns out that although my town had certainly changed, I had changed even more. Trouble is, that as soon as I left my prior abode, it too became a home to which I could not go back. Jeez - does EVERYTHING have to go on one's permanent record?

    ReplyDelete

I do not solicit comments, but leave one and me love you long time!