Looking homeward

I’ll be home in June, I just wrote to a friend from high school.
I thought about erasing the word home and writing “at Mom and Dad’s,” but I let it stand.

I’ve been married how long? Fourteen years, almost. Not yet half my life. But still I think of going to my parents’ as going home. I didn’t even grow up in the house or the community where they live now.

But they aren’t so far from where I did grow up that it doesn’t feel familiar. The same spring beauties and dutchmen's breeches and May apples hide in their woods as bloomed in the vacant lot next to the house where I grew up. My heart starts to jump a little when we turn down the shortcut road to my parents' current house. It's one of those county roads with hillocks and dips that, if you are going fast enough, lift your stomach.


And fast enough we usually go when we are heading to their farm. For one year we lived two hours away, but for most of my marriage we’ve been about twelve hours away, a drive long enough that you begin to feel a little reckless by the end, and driving fast enough to lift off those little hills brings rest, real food, and escape from the vehicle that much closer.

I think I'm almost as excited to catch the tail end of a Midwestern spring as I am to see the extended family.

But not quite.