I wrote this over a year ago, saved it in my drafts thinking it was just a little too personal. I remember writing it, after a bit too much wine, thinking about unrelated topics and wishing I could turn the clock back just a bit. I re-read it tonight, changed all the numbered years to align with the calendar. Took out the hardest parts, left in the important ones.
Still feel the same about home, and I still feel the same about the writing. Just a little too personal, but I’m trying.
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I think of home in abstract terms, wood carvings hanging on walls, vast swaths of orange and brown with woodgrain, dimly lit lights and blue-colored kitchen Sundays.
Knick-nacks, leather, ashes and the faint smell of some kinds of smoke.
How all the ridges on a gray-weathered wood deck feel on your feet at the end of the summer before a rain storm. Springy. Ready to burst. And how it creaked under every step, giving way eventually. Resting forever since.
A light under a door that meant the whole world to me. I can’t remember the last time there was a light in that room. It burnt out probably six or seven years ago but no one has been there enough to miss it properly, though I miss it from far away.
I haven’t known home in eight years and time has reminded me. So much has faded. But there’s a lot still there.
I’m not quite sure what home is anymore. For the last eight years, I have found a place to call home. An apartment number that never matches the one on my checkbook, which is always how I wanted it.
I rearrange furniture and binge clean to feel the same feeling I would get when I was young and when my dad installed bunk beds the same day my mom washed my favorite stuffed animal in heavy bleach and they tucked me in all tight and mom sang me a song.
I should have never called home a place. It’s not. There has only been one place that felt like home. The characters have changed, the light has gone out.
Home is a time period for me. I get it back in bits and pieces spread out over months and fast weekends.