homeward bound

an old message from my mom that i never erased, a song that my dad used to sing while playing his guitar when i was young, a smell that reminds me of my mom and dad's closet...a photo of my brothers and i when we were young, or just thinking of the layout of our old house, my african bedspread and a book that i've taken with me everywhere i've lived since 1999. i am needing home. memories and nostalgia, seeing photos of jenna's new baby and getting an email from a teacher who i worked with at LE who now lives in Vegas...my old friend Sheila is leaving Milwaukee. nothing remains unaltered. and yet some things remain untouched in my memory, triggered by just the right stimulus. change, it's the natural order of the universe. of course, this is what is supposed to happen, and thank goodness that it does...but sometimes it just feels like a lot (not too much, just a lot) going in so many directions, like nothing is as simple as it used to be. and yet it never felt simple at that time either. the isolation of memory is both beautiful and detrimental, allowing me to think that a different time and place could be recovered, that just singing "be not afraid" to my brothers at night would bring me back to a time when getting my pony to stop eating grass when i led her to the pasture would be my biggest challenge. so i need to go home, to be back in plymouth, to be surrounded by my family, to recuperate a bit of that which i am missing. it's not the same. nothing is, in fact. but i can take the bits and pieces and forge a new memory which will carry me back to paris and sustain me until the next time i fly across the atlantic.