Coming Home

ericvancewalton (80)in #story • 3 years ago (edited)

I came across this Rollins’ quote on our flight back from Ireland and it got me reminiscing. What else can you do but think on an eight hour flight after all?

“Someday, I would like to go home. The exact location of this place, I don't know, but someday I would like to go. There would be a pleasing feeling of familiarity and a sense of welcome in everything I saw. People would greet me warmly. They would remind me of the length of my absence and the thousands of miles I had traveled in those restless years, but mostly, they would tell me that I had been missed, and that things were better now I had returned. Autumn would come to this place of welcome, this place I would know to be home. Autumn would come and the air would grow cool, dry and magic, as it does that time of the year. At night, I would walk the streets but not feel lonely, for these are the streets of my home town. These are the streets that I had thought about while far away, and now I was back, and all was as it should be. The trees and the falling leaves would welcome me. I would look up at the moon, and remember seeing it in countries all over the world as I had restlessly journeyed for decades, never remembering it looking the same as when viewed from my hometown.” ~Henry Rollins

I remember the morning I left my hometown, Columbus, Ohio forever in 1995. I was only twenty-four years old. I felt such fear and enthusiasm as I pulled away from my childhood home and watched my parents standing at the end of the driveway, shrinking in the rearview mirror during the wee hours of the morning that July so long ago.

As I drove with all my belongings in that 1991 Honda Civic to Minnesota I was enthralled by the idea of a new beginning. I didn’t even have a job lined up and had only a few thousand dollars to my name but I had just enough youthful optimism to believe it would all work out. In truth at least a part of why I made the decision was there were things I was trying to escape. I was running from a dead-end job, friends who I felt were pulling me down each time I tried to strive, the heartache of a failed relationship.

Just like Ralphie in the film A Christmas Story I daydreamed of coming home to Columbus the triumphant hero but instead of a gunslinging lawman, like Ralphie, I would be a bestselling author. It’s all so funny and absurd to me now.

It could have gone very differently but, lucky for me, things did work out. Like everything in life, success took much longer than expected and it came with a price.

Time.

I always thought I’d move back to Columbus but it never happened. I was distracted by life -- the career treadmill, friends, and relationships. Decades passed. I watched my parents and relatives age and grow up from afar, but was thankful to see them once or twice most years. All the old friends eventually drifted away, even the friendships I thought were bulletproof and lifelong.

I’ve built a wonderful life in Minnesota. I'm grateful and happy but I’m also reminded sometimes of what I’ve missed out on. My family and I are close, maybe even closer in some ways than we were in each other’s presence regularly but it’s different than it otherwise would have been.

Aging is so much deeper than just the chronological progression, it’s a long process of reconciliation and reckoning. As we get older for us to be truly happy there must be a settlement of all our columns – pros, cons, mistakes, things we're running from and running towards, correctness, wins, and losses.

To age gracefully, without bitterness, means making peace with all of these decisions as well as the decisions of others. I’m in the process of doing that now. It's what we all need to do and what must be done before we can really move forward.

The disconnection we all find ourselves in the middle of, post-pandemic, has left many of us in lonely places, places of deep reflection. Maybe this is another thing that's gotten me thinking about all of this, I’m not sure. I’ve heard from so many others that their friends have no time for them anymore, no interest in getting together and socializing. It seems we’re ghosting each other and taking each other for granted on an epic scale. I’ve experienced this in my own life with my inner circle of Minnesota friends.

That old quote “you can’t go home again” is kind of wrong. I see clearly now, at this point in my life, that this process of making this peace with ourselves and others is what “coming home” really means. It has a way of reminding us to be humble in light of the wins and neutralizing the hurt and the regret of the losses. The comfort this peace brings is like a warm fire on a cold winter's day and, much like a well-appointed Romany caravan, it's a home that comes with you wherever you go.

~Eric Vance Walton~

Thanks for reading! All for now. Remember…trust your instincts, invest in you, live boldly, and take chances.

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3 years ago in #story by ericvancewalton (80)

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owasco (72) 3 years ago

This is very beautiful Eric.

I did, physically, move back to the town I was born in, and lived for 18 years, until I fled thinking almost anywhere else would be better than here. Nearly fifty years later, this town became the right place for me to live. I'm very happy here, happier than I've been almost anywhere else. This could be because, as you say I've found my

home that comes with you wherever you go

but I do believe I now live among the kind of folks who shaped my worldview as a youngster, and I can be more myself here as a result. Hillbillies and engineers, hunters and vegans, dems and repubs... We are well balanced in these parts, which borders on Appalachia.