untitled II
I stood on the old whitewashed, wooden, wrap around porch with the two squeeky porch swings and the chimes blowing gently in the breeze and felt something well up in my throat. And the ancient general store next door where I used to run my fingers through vats of nails, bolts and washers as a child, as so many generations of children did before me, stood empty with a large “For Sale” sign in the window. The soda fountain, deserted.
The place, the old towering Victorian mansion, I had so often played there as a little girl. Just as I had on the farm accross the river, with the acres of cornfields and rusted, antique machinery, the hummingbird feeder and the stray cats, the dog lead, belonging to collies long dead, lying limp on the gravel.
And the family. The family were always there. The family were always there, and difficult.
The women collecting in the kitchen, to swap gossip, coupons and recipes. The men in the livingroom by the wood fire arguing politics and religion, with a freshly piqued anger that could strip the wood panelling with their curses, determined to win their battles at all costs. When nobody won, the misery of failing health and old age was always a comfortable armchair to retreat to. The children looking for cats and dogs and playing hide and seek in the barn, blissfully unaware of consequences of the battles that were being engaged in in the liiving room. The women pretending that their lives were not engulfed in the wars fought by elderly men and their slightly younger apprentices in these matters, who looked to the faltering wisdom of years to guide them as they clung to their Budweisers and foul mouths for ammunition. The children just accepted and ignored. Until they were older. I left. Most didn’t.
Both places were void of human life on that day that I returned, but the ghosts came in their cavelries to trample the unfaithful heart who had left them so many years before. I never had said good bye. And now there was no one to say good bye to. No one was at home that day, and I stood breathing the memories with dry and silent tears invisible on my cheeks. I held it back, partly for the sake of myself, partly for the sake of the woman who uncomfortably journied with me that day.
I don’t quite know why it overwhelmed me that day, but something happened. Something changed. I think I said good bye.
I had a leaving party before I left on my recent trip. It was kind of a strange thing to do, as I was coming back, and I knew it at the time, but I still felt like I had to do it. I knew that there was a good bye in this trip somewhere, but to feel it so soon, before I had even stepped on a plane, was odd and confusing. It was decisive. It felt as large as the final battle.
I didn’t understand it at the time, and was aware that I was acting strangely to everyone; the party, saying good byes, hugging people, sitting on my own in the park, looking whistfully at the ducks and feeling so sad, like i would never come back. It felt like I was leaving, like the little death that I had to die to come here to begin with. I had a return ticket and my travel plans and knew that realisticly and sensibly, it was rediculous, but still it felt somehow like i was leaving, like what I had done so carelessly before.
I know now that I was just feeling, experiencing, what I was always going there to do, but would not be allowed to express while there. I know now, that I did leave here for the last time, because now I am somehow different.
You see, the first time I left the homeland, I never said good bye. I just got on a plane and left. I never looked back. I convinced myself for practically a generation that it had never exsisted. Now that I’ve been back there and have felt the ghosts, recognised their monuments and paid hommage to their memories, I can no longer deny any part they have in my own history, the part they played in making me.
The soldiers in that war have almost all died. But those places, those battlefields remain. They’re where I came from. And I’ve finally begun to say a propper good bye.
June 17th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
A lovely entry. Thanks.
June 17th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Yes: thank you sharing. And you are truly an inspiration; whereas I would not dare to compare experiences, and mine are far smaller, I have not said ‘Goodbye’ to some things I probably should’ve: thank you for the push.
June 24th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
I wish I could have been there with you. We could have done it together.