The One with Going Home

Every time it is the same.
I start packing a few days before I am set to leave. I bring out my faded purple L.L.Bean backpack I have had since 7th grade. It smells stale and there are numerous stains from nail polishes that have exploded from traveling around India and south Florida. The backpack is covered in patches. There is a patch of becoming a 6er, a 46er, of the Outcoming Club from St. Lawrence University, of Glacier National Park, and of course a purple peace sign. I used to have more patches, but I have lost many over time; the pins I use to hold them to the gortex fabric catching on plane headboards and snapping from too many cross-country road trips. This is the backpack that brings me home. The one I pack full with my laptop, chargers, speakers, journals, magazines, books, and spirit animal cards. The one I never check at the airport. The one that always stays on my back.

I then pull out a little red carry-on, that acts as my “free” carry-on bag. I bought it in India to fly home all the Christmas presents for my family and friends and now I use it to carry the small load of clothes I take with me when I travel. I try to never check a bag. When you travel alone, less is better. Plus, you save money; which I rarely ever have. I never pack pajamas, especially if I’m going home. My mother has a pair of plaid pajama pants and a fleece top waiting for me on the rocking chair in my room upon arrival. I stuff the little bag full; with my running shoes and workout outfits, a dress or two, a few pieces of jewelry, and my pink hiking fleece. I tug and tear at the zipper to make the little bag close. Standing in line at the airport gate, I wait for the flight attendant to announce, “Due to the limited amount of space on the aircraft, we are now accepting carry-on bags you can pick up at the return of your flight.” That’s when I run up to the front desk, grab a pink ticket, tie it around my red bag, and hand it away to the attendant. Now I am down to one bag, my purple backpack. When you travel alone, less is better, nobody can watch your luggage when you go to the bathroom. You have to carry it all yourself.

Every time it feels the same.
The plane begins to lose elevation, the engines slow down, the flight attendant proclaims over the speaker, “We are now about to begin our descent into Albany, New York. Arrival time will approximately be in 15 minutes.” My heart begins to beat faster with excitement of who will be picking me up. It is usually my sister, Bethany, but sometimes my mother and father join her. If I have a window seat, I open the shutter to look down upon the lush fields of central New York. I can begin to see the baby peaks of the Adirondack mountains and the Mohawk river winding its way between corn fields and farm houses. This is my homeland. The land where my home is. I hold my breath as the plane wheels hit the Albany pavement. The ground of the Empire state.

Bethany pulls the red van up to the curb, honking the horn twice, with a Bruce Springsteen song blaring. I open the side door and throw my bags in the back. I hop down beside her in the van and give her a strong hug. This scene in my head replays throughout the years. I could be coming from the Keys, from India, from France, or Hawaii. But every time I sit down in the passenger seat, it is like no time has passed between us at all. We exchange a few words, quickly explain how we are, swap some stories, and then we get right into it. Turning the radio knob as far as it can go and joining each other in unison for a verse of a Bruce Springsteen song:  “Well, me and my sister from Germantown, yeah, we did ride, and we made our beds, sir, from the rock on the mountain side, we’ve been blowing around from town to town looking for a place to land, where the sun could break through the clouds and fall like a circle, like a circle of fire down on this hard land…”

Every time it looks the same.
No matter what end of the road we are coming from. Once we turn onto Mill Road, the curves of the payment and the way the tree branches hang over the blacktop feel the same. They cast the same shadows they have been for years. You notice the mossy wooden fence posts first, sticking out by the edge of the driveway. As we pull in, the elegant white house emerges from behind the giant Oak tree. Then the tiny smoke house, then the red hop house, and then the rolling hills of Cherry Valley creating the backdrop of our back-deck view. It is as if God created this estate. Placing my mother’s garden perfecting at the edge of it, the massive bonfire pit stuck out to the side, swings dangling from the limbs of our maple trees, tiger lilies popping up along all sides of the barn, four rows of hops growing viciously tall up the lines of coil my father put up individually by hand. Welcome home I whisper to myself.

I did not grow up in a city, or suburb, or highly populated town. Evening rush hour was caused by cows crossing the road, from one pasture to the other. When somebody new from out of town was moving in, the whole village knew about it. The whole 800 of us. I was born in the country. Raised on dairy farm land. Where the smell of cow manure is common and there is no sense of washing your car with all the dirt roads you have to drive over. I was raised in the open. My playground was hundreds of acres of land, and corn fields were sustainable crops not scenes from a horror movie. I grew up in a fairy tale. If you could see what I woke up to every morning as a child you may not believe it. You may now understand why I am the way I am. The sound of robins chirping from the nest by my bedroom window starting at 4:30 am, dew dripping and shimmering from the alfalfa fields, an old full moon slipping behind the horizon line. I grew up in beauty, in freedom, in light. I grew up with space and the opportunity to fill it up with my nothing more than, but my dreams.

Every time it smells the same.
As I open the red front door and enter into the breezeway, it smells of Cortland apples that my mother keeps in a wicker basket at fall time, though the scent of fresh apples lingers in the air all year. As I open the second door, I am met with the smell of burning candles from the night before and fresh cotton. My mother always keeps a clean house, it never smells bad, despite the tractor wagons full of manure that pass daily. Shoes are scattered around the front door and brightly colored jackets are hung from hooks lining the wall. My shoes come off, my jacket hung up, my bags thrown to the ground. The first thing I do is walk. I walk around my house in a circle. I walk through the living room, I walk through the dinning room, I walk through the kitchen. I notice what is new; what new pictures my mother has put into frames or collaged the refrigerator with. I notice what new antiques my father has refinished and decorated a new corner of the house with. I notice what new Melaleuca soap my mother has by the sink in the bathroom.

After my walk about the downstairs, I then make my way upstairs, running my hand along the smooth brown banister. I peak in the guest room, I stop by my father’s office, I look to see what quilt my mother has adorned her bed with this time. I save my room for last. It looks different now than it used too. Years ago, in its golden era, my room was fashioned with old mirrors, Victorian frames, peacock feathers, and elegant hats of all colors. My friends used to say it was like walking into a museum. After I leave for college my parents keep my room mostly the same. It wasn’t until I graduate four years later and am moving into my first house that my room began to change. The mirrors slowly begin to come down. The hats I pack up into the trunk that used to lie at the edge of my bed. Old picture collages of high school friends are put away. Walking into my room now, there is not one piece of evidence that this room was once mine. The walls have been repainted an eggshell white, covering all the nail holes and parts of wall that have been peeled away by tape. The bed is new, along with the night stand and rocking chair that sits in the corner. The only thing that is the same is a massive white shelf I pulled out of the barn years ago. My father nailed it up and upon it I placed picture frames of all the important people in my life. One picture still remains. The one of my mother and me.

Coming home to her is the hardest. In the end, I never want to leave. I fall back in the rhythm of slow evenings swinging under the maple trees, walking barefoot through her garden, running my hands along the lavender. I lay down beside her every night, before she goes to bed, her face turned towards mine, our hands holding the other. It doesn’t matter how old I am, or how tired she might be, every night we end the day together. As I go to hug her, her lavender powder paralyzes me. I have laughed, I have cried, I have smiled into her shoulder a thousand times, never wanting to pull away. Never wanting to have to leave the next day. Sometimes I wish she would never let me go. Sometimes I wish she would hold me and protect me forever. She is my mother, my dream maker, the prism in my skies. Coming home to her is the hardest. In the end, I am the one who has to leave. I won’t wash my clothes for weeks after a visit, to keep the feeling of her hug around me. To keep her scent in my soul. Her love on my sleeve.

The saying goes, “Wherever you feel loved, you are home.” If that is the case, you have hundreds of homes, stretching from the Florida Keys to the Adirondacks of New York. From the city limits of Boston to Big Sky country. There is only one place, one dot on the map, that you keep coming back to. That you keep coming home to. 356 Mill Road, Cherry Valley, New York. Where the red front door always opens you into a house full of love.  Full of mason jars of hand picked flowers, shelves of homemade jam, copies of National Geographic stacked on the chair in the corner.  Where at times, you feel as if you are aging backwards. Where the hops grow high and the sunflowers sing you into a smile. Where taking a walk on an old tractor lane can erase any doubt you may have about life and the unforeseen future. Where the hop house looks its best at night and bonfires still sizzle out smoke in the morning. This is home. Your home. The place where your dreaming lives and breathes and tells you to keep going. Keep working, keep striving, keep growing. Deep down, you know it. You see the truth staring at you in your face, that this, this, is your future. That one day after all of your travels, after all of your romping around, and exploring and learning, you will come back here. You will make this place home again.

I am sitting in the passenger seat of my father’s jeep, the windows rolled down, and a Bruce Springsteen song comes on over his Sirius radio (of course it does, we are listening to “The Boss” Sirius radio station). I let my hand glide gently in the summer breeze, twisting to the harmonies of the song. My father turns slowly onto our road, as the crescendo of the song grows. This is my favorite part of coming home. The road. The blacktop path that twists and turns me to the white house at the end of it. The unchanging route that leads me home. The song climaxes as we inch our way closer to the house, my hand traces the outline of the low climbing Cherry Valley hills that pop up over the cattails and cornstalks. The cotton candy clouds pierce the afternoon sky and tears dot my eyes as I look across the landscape of my youth. My soul lies out there, in those hills and fields and tiny creeks that bubble through them. My heart is hollowed into the white birch trees and my voice can be heard singing in the raspberry patches. This is my home. The backdrop of my past and the illustration of my future. We near the house, and an applause from the crowd breaks out through the song. We are ushered into the driveway with cheers and claps, swelling us with the acknowledgement that we made it home. As the car comes to a standstill, my father and I look at each other; not with sadness that this is the last day before I have to leave, but with the anticipation that this is where I am coming back to the next time I leave again. The next time I come home.