So, I've been figuring it out

I've been back in my hometown for about six weeks. I still feel like a visitor. I still feel like I have a flight I need to catch to go back, to go forward, to just go.

I don't. This is my present, and I am really struggling to figure it out. I have an amazing security net of people who love me and want the best for me. But, I don't ask for help--and usually don't want it. Is this stubborn? Yes. Is this reality? Also, yes.

I read all the blogs about going back home after living abroad. I prepared myself for all of the scenarios. All of them. Except my own. I am back, but different. I am finding footing on a path that was. My tread is just a bit too cautious, my shoes don't quite fit, my hiking vest doesn't have enough pockets for all my new things.  I'm living a life I don't know--an adult life in the world of my childhood.

I've visited places that once held magic only to find it replaced by something new, something tangible, something real. I went to my grandparents' house yesterday. After they died, we sold the land to the city because it was technically floodplains. The entire plot was overgrown with spiky flowers so opposite of my gentle grandfather. The giant oak tree loomed above, void of life; fairies used to call it home. Short grass covered the fire pit, the birthplace of Grandma's Magic. And, they paved right over the troll bridge. Who's collecting the tolls? No one. And, all the while the Rock River rolls along, seemingly unchanged.

I see myself in this. Everything about me is different, but there's gotta be a constant somewhere, right? Or, do I make a new constant, a new anchor I trust to keep me from floating away? I dunno.

I guess, right now, let these truths be an anchor, which holds me steady:

1. I have never loved anyone as much as I love my niece(s and nephew--honorary). Or, that's perhaps unfair. I have never loved anyone in the same way I love them. I will drive two and a half hours to babysit Sweet P. I am so excited to watch her learn and grow into whatever she wants to be. I will stop what I am doing to go to the park with my best friend's children. My heart can't even handle it when T chooses me to catch her at the bottom of the slide. I need to be here right now. That's all there is.

2. I miss teaching. Apparently, it doesn't matter if it is English as a second language, To Kill a Mockingbird, or the front crawl. Teaching is my passion, and I am lucky enough to be in a position to continue learning and studying how to do it to the best of my ability.

3. Women's active wear is expensive and limited in selection. I don't have time for that kind of nonsense. Give me a pair of basketball shorts and let's go.

4. My mom is probably the most amazing woman in the whole wide world, closely followed by my sister. Their capacity to take on way more than any person should handle and come through with an air of grace and poise inspires me. I am glad to spend this time together and learn from them as much as I can.

5. The path that was is not always the path that is, and that's okay. I've just got to adventure on.

So, here’s looking at the moon, Sister

I have been a wee bit out of sorts for the past two months, and my writing has been straight out of an acid washed, tape bound composition notebook circa 2004. I had a deadline in my brain when I woke up this morning that by the time I go to sleep, I will have produced something to post on the bloggity blog.

When I got home, I was all rarin’ to go on some recent feminist issue: a silver tongued soap box declaration of human rights. Rah rah rah. And, trust me. That will come in time. But, in my Skype conversations with my sister, I realize that there are more important things than pushing my incredibly biased agenda on you unsuspecting folks at home.

This past week, my sister, an elementary school music teacher (among a million other really awesome things), had a choir concert. As she was preparing for it, she told me about the theme and how excited she was to do “A Night at the Theatre.” All throughout high school, our house rang with show tunes and theatrical responses to paltry issues. I was eager to hear how the show went.

After a short conversation (technology did that thing that it stopped working at the exact moment you’d like it to work), she sent me an email with some videos of her concert. She said, “Check out…video one for a little surprise.” Right before “Somewhere Out There” from Fieval Goes West, she made an announcement to the audience about how for siblings, she only has me, her little sister, who currently lives in South Korea. And, we only can talk on Skype, but sometimes we say, “I’m looking at the moon, Sister” because when we’re both looking at the same moon, it seems like the distance isn’t so far.

And, that right there is the point of this. Of all of this. Distance in time and space when gauged by the  moon seems so minuscule, so silly. The same moon was there before I was born. It’s there now. It will continue after I depart this earth.  

Under this ubiquitous moon, my sister loved me before I was a feminist, before I was a teacher, before I was strong. She loved me through my terrible twos, my codependent eights, that awkward summer when I was 13 with braces, glasses, and a broken arm.  That awkward summer when I was 22 with…ummm…that awkward summer when I was 22. And, sometime between Backstreet Boys, pogs, and hair dye the bond changed from loving each other because "Mom said" to loving each other because we chose it.

The same moon that shown over us in our childhood, still peeks his head out now. He watches over us as we continue to grow—a constant charge in our ever evolving lives. And, I’m not sayin’ that because I live in the future I know all the things, I’m just sayin’ that I know that the world doesn’t end today. The sun rises with her as the moon rises with me. Tonight, though, it’s just a sliver, a bow shooting memories across the sky. 

So, I'm figuring out family

So, I'm figuring out family: an observation of "home" after an extended absence

By the time, we reach the 894 bypass, I could have driven the rest of the way to my mom’s house without hesitation or doubt. My mom took all the right exits chatting away while my father scrunched up in the back seat listened to our small talk.

When she pulled into the garage, I ran into the house and engulfed my sister in a hug that had neither beginning nor end. It just was. Then I sidled up to my brother in law and felt whole in his embrace. A few moments later, I remembered my luggage and trounced down the stairs to collect it. Within the hour, my father dealt the cards for Dirty Clubs, and in that moment my patchwork family quilted a new memory: That night Katie came back.

The routine was so familiar. The couch and wing backs still stood sentinel to the fireplace. The bookshelves housing my childhood favorites continued to wait for the next generation of adventurers. Bailey and Brenden wove underfoot both calling for then rejecting my attention. The cards dealt 3-2-3-2-3.

Yet, there were spider web cracks in this mirror of Christmases past—four stockings hung on the mantle, figurines perched in the place of my father’s dusty tomes; his antique Santa bank watched over another house this year.

Everyone did their best to make me feel at home. They each contributed a favorite food to the homecoming feast. We ate, drank, and talked over one another, per usual. We shelved our differences, our opinions, and our hurts to celebrate everyone's health and presence at the table.

We are still trying to figure out how to function as a five person unit. Some of the cogs are misplaced, some of the joints were broken but are now mended, and some of the wheels that kept everything turning are lost forever. But, we try to make it work because that’s what we’ve always done.