Winded, I plop myself onto the ground, leaning back to enjoy the warm sun on my face. Bittersweet... I would happily trade a dozen of these moments to hover over the old floor furnace in my childhood home. For just a little while, and absorb the sensory overload that IS my family and friends; just a minute... maybe two.
Homesickness weighs on my shoulders and sours in my stomach. Choking on the warm air, I can feel my heart, burdened by my heavy tears, sinking down through me into the hard ground below. Anchoring me on the spot and stopping time to draw out a single, torturous moment.
It's a warm January birthing a hot February, hotter March, and a baking April; a scattered litter of hot and sunny days bleeding into one another. In Oklahoma, the children are bundled in their cozy layers while ice frosts my hometown. Kids out of school; enjoying snow days with soaked mittens and pink noses.
Life goes on...
A fog of secrets and complaints will fall on other deserving ears, but my head hums with a loud silence. Ghosts of stories that will reach me too late lose their significance and fall sleepily to my feet. I shove them aside. Kicking up the dust and dirt that Arizona gifts me.
Oklahoma hasn't even noticed, and I am forgotten in Arizona.
Wow....I read this entry and I could feel your homesickness and "lostness". We have moved several times - and have lived far from my family for the last 15 years. The move here to PHX was the hardest (after 5 years in a small community in TX, it was being plopped into a sea of strangers.) I eventually and slowly got out of my lostness, and have been relatively happy here. Still miss my family, but I've made friends, gotten involved in things I care about, and have become more connected. No doubt about it, I would rather be "home", but for now, I realized this is my home.....my very hot, dry, deserty, home.
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