Homeward bound

Of course, expecting my mother to be waiting silently for me is too much to ask; she’s always got something to say. I leave tomorrow morning for about a week, home for a few days and then to a wedding. My bags are packed and I'm ready to go… except it’s not a jet plane, it’s a compact rental car. Travelling and visiting in the summer isn’t like the holidays. There’s less chocolate. The car windows stay down the entire trip. And without extended family around to mediate, my mother’s comments become more unpredictable. She’s been uncharacteristic lately – asking about my writing, supporting some of my decisions, offering sorely needed financial assistance. Then there’s the wedding – a reunion of sorts for me, since I haven’t been back in two years. Anticipating the acres of ground to cover with old friends at the same time as I'm looking back on what’s been trod with more recent ones, there’s a pervasive sense of shifting emotional continents. The motion of a few friends’ lives has picked up – jobs are changing, cities are changing – and along with it there’s a scramble to check the anchors. Some fixed points are necessary for navigation: the ones that know who you are now, the ones that know you so well you can’t see behind you without them. Such thoughts recur each time I head home to stretches of sky and of water and of stars. This time tomorrow you can find me standing in the field behind my parents’ house, staring upwards, marvelling.