Homeward Bound

The breeze brushes against my skin, caressing my cheek almost as if the mountains themselves know I’m not coming back. All the months of excitement, planning, preparing, frustration, and anticipation built up to this moment. Each moment of the applying, being accepted, registering, packing, and saying goodbyes enumerate themselves in goosebumps on my skin as I’m about to leave. The breeze at home always had a gentle touch, save for the rare storms that brewed and fitfully struck from time to time. It was soft and familiar, sheltered and tamed by the looming mountains who prevented it from being too unruly. Even though the sun has yet to rise, you can practically feel them standing guard over our quiet little county. Always there on the outskirts, a protective line few people venture past. But at some point their border’s homely familiarity dissolved into confinement, their beauty cheapened as their peaks transformed into walls no one could climb and the gentle breeze morphed into restricted tendrils who’d never been allowed to roam freely.

A shiver runs down my spine when the trunk slams after my brother loads the last of my clothes in my car. Yet another figure in my life that says little but is also stands resolute in the distance watching over me. We say nothing in passing because we know that he and our mother will be following my eight hour drive the next day with my furniture and the slamming trunk reminding us of the reality of this moment. He, like most others here, talked of leaving quite often yet never dared venture past the wall or even peeked at what lay beyond. I see a hint of sadness in his eyes, but is overshadowed by an understanding neither one of us needs to voice.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say to my mother in encouragement as her trembling arms wrap around me so tightly I think she’s trying to fuse her bones to mine just so she won’t have to let me go.

“I know, baby,” her shaky voice whispers, though I think it’s more to assure herself than me. She pulls back just enough to look into my eyes and I know she’s replaying last night’s conversation in her head because I do the same.

“Are you scared?” my mother asks, holding my hand as I sit beside her on the couch.

“A little,” I admit honestly. “But I’m ready to go.” I give her hand a small squeeze. A deep breath fills my lungs almost to the point of bursting, my mind racing with thoughts I don’t want to speak, both because I know I’ll start crying if I do and because I worry they’ll hurt her feelings.

“Your daddy would be so damn proud of you,” she says. I don’t look up at her face, but I already know the beaming, teary-eyed expression that’s on her face because it’s the same one she gave me when I told her I was accepted into law school and decided to move.

“He was supposed to be here.” The words come out as a barely audible whisper as they ghost between my lips. In this moment, I’m no longer a twenty-five year old woman starting a new adventure, but a small child aching for her father’s warm embrace and looking over at his urn makes me feel empty and cold. “He should be checking the air in my tires and the oil a hundred times before I go,” I say, the ache overflowing from inside me and running in cold trails down my cheeks. “He should be giving me a hard time about having so many books because they make the boxes too heavy and he has to carry them.” My mother wraps her arms around me and I let her pull me into her as I feel myself start to unravel. “He should be lecturing me about getting a security system for the apartment because he wants me to be safe.” They always knew I would leave, and so did I. I just always assumed they would both be there when I came back.

I take a deep breath to stave off the tears before they can reappear. 

“I’ll be right back,” says my mother before she disappears inside the house. I look to my brother for an answer but he has none to give. Moments later she returns with a blanket bundled up as if swaddling a newborn. She hands the bundle off to me and the weight of it takes me by surprise. “Don’t drop him!” she squeals.

“Him?” I ask, more shocked and confused by the statement than the unexpected weight of the blanket.

She looks at me with a small smile and tucks a stray lock of my hair behind my ear. “I can’t do this next part of your life with you. God I wish I could go with you but you were right, you need to do this on your own. You were also right that your daddy was supposed to be here.

The blanket has shifted enough by now that the metal of my father’s urn is peeking out at me. “I don’t understand,” I tell her, looking back and forth between her and the urn.

“He may not be able to check your oil or hug you, but he’s still watching over his baby girl. You’re going to need a reminder of that on those days when you miss him the most and I can’t go with you, but he can.”

Little did I know just how much that would help me, but a mother always knows.

Two years later…

To this day I still remember how electric it felt to be on the interstate heading into the unknown, to something new, then getting here and feeling like I could truly breathe for the first time. Each mile lessened the grip of the cycle of staying in the same town, raising a family, never leaving, and watching my children do the same. I remember the first time I felt the wind here, really felt it. Its bite pierced my clothes and unrelentingly whipped my hair in every direction, harsh and at times sharply cold. It howled unapologetically at night outside my window, unyielding and chaotic and powerful and untamed - everything I’d never allowed myself to be within the cocoon of mountains.

I was once asked why I call both places home when I have no intentions of moving back and you can only have one home. But they were wrong. That small town is the home I was born into and this is the one I’m making for myself. I’m reminded just how true that is every night when I go home and I glance at my father’s urn, knowing he’s beaming proudly as he watches over me build a life of my own.