Homesick

Sometimes I get homesick. I never actually lived in my parent’s last home they shared together. Peculiarly it seems like my old home to me. They stayed there longer than anywhere else. It surprises me how strong the desire is to be back there. For just a bit I want that feeling that I’m home and I’m somebody’s kid again. I visited mostly in the summer and that’s the season in my memory. There’s Mom sitting at the kitchen table early in the morning with her coffee and her magnified mirror relentlessly pursuing chin hairs. She got up early to have some alone time. She’s in a terry tank top she liked to wear in the summer, white and lime striped. The kitchen table sort of blocked the entry and she sat on the kitchen side relaxing in her territory. She’d stay up late sometimes and clean the kitchen. You could hear the rumbling of the dishwasher in the downstairs guest room after everyone had gone to bed.

Dad would go get the paper in the morning, everyday after he retired. Sometimes times I’d walk up to Safeway with him to get it. We’d get the paper and wander around inspecting the veggies and fruit and maybe buy something else and walk home. He’d wrap his head with a cloth Japanese style and go out and trim the hedges, mow, and pull weeds until he needed to hire someone else to do it. He still pruned though.

There are really only a handful witnesses to my early childhood left. Part of me is disappearing like a dream. It’s as ancient history as any. Dad’s work kept us moving often, 14 schools in 12 years, and more houses. Because of that constant moving the two older of us don’t have childhood friends. They didn’t buy a house and stay put until I was a junior in my third high school. The second house they bought was where they stayed.

It’s funny that while they were alive I lived my life most adults do, but when they were gone, I discovered I had possessed a feeling that if anything went wrong there was someone who cared and had an answer just for me and that was gone too. I remember Dad saying home was a place where you could always come for a hot meal, a good night’s sleep, and a loving word. He was talking about his home, and that’s how I felt. I have never quite slept so soundly as I did when I visited there.