Observations on Being at Home

What makes home, home? Is it the way your childhood bed envelops you like you never left it? Is it the particular shade of blue-green on the walls that reminds you of the ocean and feeling small and tired from a day at the beach? Is it knowing that when you wake up you’ll find coffee in the coffee pot, and the paper waiting for you to leisurely read it, laughing at the local news and frowning at the national? Is it being at once nostalgic for your childhood habits, but excited by the understanding you have gained as an adult? Is it waking in the middle of the night and hearing the sound or your parents breathing in their sleep, knowing that for this moment, whatever happens next, all is right with the world? Or is it simply knowing that wherever you go and whatever you do, there is a small place in the world where two people will always love you, will always miss you?

It has been strange being at home these last few weeks. I have discovered much about myself, and about my past. I have put to rest a lot of longstanding concerns, and explored a lot of new ideas about where I come from and how it informs where I’m going. I’ve discovered that no matter how hard I run from Kansas, it always seems to be inside me, the wide open spaces and the down home manners; the oppressive heat and the brilliant blue sky. I am as much a product of this state as anything else, and I have decided to stop denying it. It makes me who I am, it makes it difficult for me to accept that paying $750 for an apartment is a good deal, reminds me that all politics is local politics. I never realized how much of my civic mindedness was a product of Wichita until I moved to a place where local politics got much less attention than national. I’m not saying one if better than the other, but here people care about things like the city council and the school board, and the decisions those bodies make are easily as important to people here as the war in Iraq or Immigration Reform. Here they are all tired together. There are many people that live here who have political views I simply cannot bring myself to respect or even understand. I have tried. What I can respect, however, is the discourse- here people still care enough to have an argument, whether it’s in the editorial pages of the paper, or on the floor of the city council.

I have tried to be open to the city, to my past here, more so than I’ve been on the other times I’ve visited. I am not afraid of running into anyone now, not afraid of trying to justify what I’ve been doing away from home for the last seven years, or what I’m doing going forward. I’ve been able to reflect on the great support system I had hear growing up, on all the people and organizations that were pulling so hard for my success, and who continue to do so. In retrospect, I’m not entirely sure what I was running from so hard, except the fear of stagnation. I still fear stagnation, I will not lie to you, but I can see from an older perspective that stagnation is not the result of a place; it is the result of a mindset. Unfortunately many people here are in that mindset, and that contributes to sort of the general feel of the place, but since I’ve left, it has grown in some ways by leaps and bounds, and that is be commended. I still would not want to move back, but now I can see that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, if for some reason I had to.

It will be hard to leave home, hard to leave my parents, and their love and support. I know that travels with me, but there is something to be said for being taken care of, for being able to get a hug from your mother just because, or to laugh with your father about some stupid joke. These are the things I miss; these are the things I know they miss. Perhaps it is the purview of the only child, to be so close with his or her parents that you miss them even when you’re there, as though when you aren’t together you are missing a limb. In my 25th year I begin to reckon with the idea of mortality, mine and others, and if I can barely stand how much I miss them from across the country, I admit that it scares me to think of how I will be when they are gone.

Such are the morose and melancholy thoughts of being at home. On the whole I am joyful, and excited and ready, but as will all big steps forwards, there is the fleeting glance back, the trepidation at moving ahead. I move toward my next chapter, know that there is beauty and love behind me, and the same ahead.