Monday, January 11, 2010

Homesickness: The Ghosts of Oklahoma

I was just thinking about this post this morning. I wrote it about this time last year. Three years in Phoenix, AZ, and I was missing everything about home. We've since moved back.

Now I am freezing my ass off... I am still happy to be home :-)


Homesickness: The Ghosts of Oklahoma


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.

4 comments:

  1. sigh, yes life goes on...

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  2. Poor, neglected blog...
    I'm glad that you're happy to be back home. :)

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  3. Good to see you again!

    Homesickness is like an itch that can never be banished.

    Your description of how one month leads into another by degrees (heh) made me hot and uncomfortable.

    So you're back home. In Oklahoma...and here :)

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  4. "..hover over the old floor furnace.." I used to do exactly that, and had forgotten all about it until I read this, so thank you for the fond memories.
    Lovely prose here - glad you rediscovered it and shared.

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