headTalk.

What would it take to forgive you?
—To the one who tried to ask.—

Did you really think after two decades it would be enough to offer me $100 to buy my love? One Christmas in all those years would really be enough to make it up to me? The years you missed with me are worth far more than that. Had I accepted, you would’ve gotten a bargain. You, however are not worth a fraction of your offer. No, I won’t even consider accepting.

What would it take to forgive you?
—To the one who almost asked.—

You came to the door today, I wasn’t supposed to be here, you were expecting someone else to answer. A moment of panic for us both. No words said, and eye contact narrowly avoided as you handed the small box of my belongings to me. Behind the closed door, through a part in the window curtain, I watched you get into your car. You sat there looking back at the house and for a second I thought you might work up the nerve to turn around and come back to my door. I could see the struggle in your face as you made the decision to turn on your car and drive away.

What would it take to forgive you?
—To the one who never asked.—

If you showed up at my door today, unannounced, after nearly ten years of absence, would I let you in? I willingly admit I still love you. When you disappeared on me, I thought I would never get over it, never get over you. I am over you, yet I still miss the way you made me feel. If you could promise to make me feel that way again, even if for a small moment, I would let you in. But would that be enough to forgive you for the way you make me feel in your absence?

I sit surrounded by the craftsmanship of my grandfather in a bedroom built for my mother.  I admire the skill and patience applied by hand to the joints and corners of a room that has undergone frequent improvements, transforming it from the years my mother spent here.  I try to imagine the teenage heart throbs pictured in posters above her bed.  Then I smile, realizing the transformation their faces, too, have undergone.  Names and faces I recognize these many years later as legends in entertainment.

I remember the walls as they were during my summers spent here as a child, my mother’s room becoming my own.  Covered not in posters, but in outdated, gray paneling.  I shared this room from time to time with cousins, siblings, companions and cowboys and Indians.  Aboard stagecoaches, rocket ships and pirate ships, our bunk beds served as passage to endless adventures and explorations.  Closing my eyes now, I can almost smell the freshly dug earth beneath the hoofs of the rocking horse which led the charge against marauding natives.

Opening my eyes, I expect to find a plastic cowboy hat and cap pistol in their place and my hand tightly clinched on a braided mane.  But I’m not on my rocking horse, instead I find a room much more suited for grandchildren, now grown, returning with lovers and children of their own.  I no longer find the company of imaginary landscapes and the dark, dated paneling is gone, replaced by bright, fresh paint trimmed by decorative crown molding.  Where rocking horses, bunk beds and toy chests once stood, sit delicate antique furniture arranged in a comfortable lounge.  Were I still a child, I’m sure the area with its lace tablecloths and silk throw pillows would be off-limits to my touch.

Over several decades this old room slowly gave way to modern accessories, giving up its relics one by one.  I no longer struggle in the dark waving hand over head searching for the string to turn on a single, exposed light bulb hanging from the ceiling.  It has been traded-up for a proper light switch convenient to the door and an energy-saving fixture mounted in its place.  I smile and wonder if my mother ever felt the dreaded sense of rush and adrenalin standing at the edge of the dark room.  Mustering the courage to leap from door to light switch hoping the light replaces shadows before feet hit the floor.  I also wondered if she ever had to stand facing my grandfather with broken chain in one hand and an apology in the other, as I did on more than one occasion.  His response was always the same, “You’re much too old for such behavior.”  Admittedly, I remained afraid of the dark in that room for several years until after installation of the new switch.

I smile again and dare myself now to take a peak at the shadows beneath the bed!

— Others in this series —
Traveling Home, part 1 “Our Woods, Our Adventures and Our Mountains”
Traveling Home, part 2 “My Grandmother”
Traveling Home, part 3 “If These Walls Could Talk”

I’ve been back to my home state many times in the recent past, but it has been quite a long time since I’ve returned to the places I grew up.  To the places I remember as far back as memory began it’s first tings of recognition in the recesses of my mind.  Memories that formed long before emotion or personality came to identify me.

I recall eating raw cucumber for the first time, picked directly from the garden, as a happy, pony-tailed toddler before I can remember the first recognition of my own mother’s face.  The definition of ‘home’, to me, is more important than even family.  Family stays with me no matter where I travel, but home is defined by one single place which can not be compared to any other.  It is defined by the memories I carry with me throughout my life of that place.  A place I am always trying to find my way back to.  It’s a place I recognize myself in and I recognize within my own self.

The things I remember are the fear of snapping turtles in Brushy Fork Creek-turtles legend states could swallow a child whole-and a fear of falling from the narrow stone bridge which crosses that stream.  There was an unspoken understanding that the ‘junk graveyard’ on the ridge opposite our homestead was strictly off limits.  The wild horses still sometimes seen there were not to be ridden.  The hollowed out Model-T’s, Iceboxes and other such decaying rarities found in our woods were not to be recommissioned for use in our adventures, though this is a rule that was broken on many occasions.  The doors to Iceboxes [modern day's equivalent is known as the refrigerator] made fantastic sleds in the winter.  It is lucky such doors could be found in random abundance throughout the countryside because they were too heavy to haul back up the faces of our mountains for another wild and out of control ride dodging trees down and down towards the valley below.

How those junk graveyards made their way into the woods, miles from anything, is still a mystery to me.  Each generation blames the one before for depositing this trash, though at some point the generation at blame becomes older than the inventor of each item and no one has taken credit.   The children only two decades before me would not have hesitated to harness the ancestors of our wild horses to the windshield of an old automobile and “see where we end up.”  It is that sense of adventure which led my generation to follow in their footsteps.

Our mountains were broken by our valleys.  Our valleys gave access to our world.  We traveled on foot, made trails where none existed, poked our heads into fox holes on steep cliff sides that would make experienced mountain climbers think twice before scaling.  In our world there were no limits.  Everything was there for our exploration and there were no boundaries laid out before us.

We learned about natural resources unique to our mountains.  We watched the arm on a gas well pumping methodically away as each member of our gang tried to mount it.  We searched endlessly for the opening to a coal mine, just one ridge away from the gas well.  All we found were rotting picnic tables where coal miners spent their lunch hours several decades before us.

The memories of these things cause excitement to well up inside me to the point I can barely stand it.  I’m going home tomorrow.  I’m excited, anxious and nervous.  I remember our world quite differently than it is now.  I know exactly when to roll down my car windows to be welcomed home by that familiar scent, which means I’m finally there.  That is something which has never changed.  But each stint between visits home grows longer and longer.

It is hard for me now to see how different reality is from my memories, which contributes in part to my hesitancy in planning trips home.  There are boundaries now.  I can no longer take off in one direction for days at a time.  I can barely walk an hour before wondering if the owner of the land beyond a fence line is friendly.  There was a time when a name meant everything in our community.  If found trespassing, upon discovery of what family I belonged to, I was welcomed on any man’s land.  There is no such recognition anylonger.  Neighbors are strangers.  Strangers are not welcome.

I sometimes feel a stranger when I return home, even in the secret places most familiar to me.  The world around me there has changed, but my mountains are still there.  They hold the same memories I do.  They hold the memories of my grandfather before me.  My favorite tree is still there, though the brook which runs beside it has long since dried up.  I am too big to fit through the trap door to my tree house though I will still climb the ladder and open the door to poke my head inside.  There are no more Model-T’s to be found on my ridge.  My fear of gravity, developed as an adult, will keep me from my fox holes.

Though this current stretch between visits home has been the longest ever, I fear the next will be even longer.  I am losing the memories of my childhood to reality.  I do not want to return again so soon as to lose more memories to the changes I am confronted with every time I wonder those woods.

Tomorrow I will travel home to my hillsides.  I will walk them alone since my gang has long since grown and moved away, as have I.   My grandfather is still there, but he is far too old to set foot on those hillsides and must now recall his own memories through my adventures.  I’m excited, anxious and nervous to be returning home tomorrow.

— Others in this series —
Traveling Home, part 1 “Our Woods, Our Adventures and Our Mountains”
Traveling Home, part 2 “My Grandmother”
Traveling Home, part 3 “If These Walls Could Talk”