My 21st year found me as a new resident of Ann Arbor, and wrapped in a fog of grief, that was so thick, I was drenched-soaked to the skin. You know the kind of fog. It doesn't look so bad, but after awhile on your journey you find a much wetter, more penetrating kind of mist envelopes you-and at the onset of hypothermia you realize that there's NO time to change the road you're on. Not that there was a choice in the matter-of watching my mom die slowly in the ICU right here down the street at the UM hospital. After which I embraced anything that would alter my reality, any escape. I was also attempting to repudiate the up-until-that-point box of delusional safety I had been living in. Of course, like most humans, I traded one delusion for another, but at least it was MY choice, MY decision, MY failure. I was exploring my own inner landscape, creativity, physical limitations of emotional pain and love at first sight on a daily basis. And of course, whatever was generously offered up for consumption. Thank you very much.
Ten, fifteen, twenty-years gone
-I've been back several times since I relocated westward many years ago, but this time feels different. Maybe it's the reuniting with old friends in the countryside. The Monarchs circling milkweed, crescent moon setting over Tarot layout-the laughter and warmth and all those cliche things that when they are happening are so amazing. Walking quietly among the Queen Anne's Lace, Red Wing Blackbird's singing their song at dusk, and just the Green, Green Grass of Home-all bringing back that golden glow of childhood summers and memory of feeling so loved.
After I walked the Labyrinth, before we made our way back to A2, I sat silently in the morning song, it's light cradled my heart, sun piercing third-eye, like my first Arb sunrise...
I felt all that grief and sadness fall back, away into the abyss of the past, finally, completely. I took a deep breath, and pressed the RESET button on my soul, and in that moment of purity felt a crack in the cocoon and perhaps some wing rustling. The following jump in Lake Michigan was the finale in this spontaneous cleanse. And it felt good.
But now, all have dispersed to their own little corners of the world. And here I remain. Again. Just like in the old days. Damn. Have I stayed too long at the fair? Again? As I honor this emotion, by staring slack jawed at the field of wild flowers adjacent to this cafe, complete with grazing deer and scampering bunnies (the new squirrels), caffeine pulses through my veins and I wonder-should I have stayed in Michigan? Finished school, married and bred, just like so many of my peers, and tried to recapture and pass down my childhood through my own family that possibly could have fed my soul in a way nothing else could?
"...And I guess that I just don't know..."
But I do know, Lou. Truly I do.
It's just the sound of the wind through the leaves that causes a pause.
Because the reality is, there really is nothing here for me. But memories. Some beautiful; some so painful they on occasion, still haunt me as I lay me down to sleep.My Mom used to say, "You Can't Go Home Again", which I never understood. Because she never left home. She got married and they built a house across the street from where she grew up and gave us our Kodak Moment Big Wolf Lake upbringing.
Mom, you can go home again.
But it will end in tears.
Or a kick-ass Thunderstorm!
Bring. It. Please.
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