Sunday, March 18, 2012

The Scintilla Project - Bonus 1

The bonus prompt for Saturday is to talk about a time you left home.

I left home and went home the same day in September 1997.

A few days before I left Birmingham, Ala., a moving company had picked up boxes of possessions, assorted pieces of furniture, and many books. They would arrive about two weeks later in Pacifica, Calif., to a tiny apartment by the ocean.

I was leaving my home of seven years, my husband of 27 years, and many friends to move to California -- by myself -- because it was something I *had* to do. It wasn't that I had ties to my new home, although I have relatives scattered throughout the west. It was me. I had come to a place where I needed some changes, and the life I'd been living was not the life I wanted to live anymore. I knew I did not want to ever look back at my life and wonder "What if..."

That Sunday morning when I left home, I'd kissed my husband's forehead as he headed off to church and his responsibilities there and saw tears in his eyes: we would divorce over the next several months, a mutual and amicable decision. I finished my coffee, put my computer, a little television and a small suitcase in my new Saturn sedan, and turned to look once more at what was no longer my home: the roses and vines I'd planted on the side of the steep driveway, the red front door, the sheer curtains in the windows. I was done here.

And then I headed north and west to Springfield, Missouri -- to my parents' home, the Tudor-styled two-story house that they'd lived in since I was 10. That night, after a warm welcome and good dinner, I went to sleep in my old bedroom; the bed, dressing table, even the lamps of my girlhood still the same, and feeling a bit out of place: for the first time in my life, I had no home of my own, not then. I'd left home and come home -- but I wasn't home.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's something inherently beautiful and cyclic about ending one journey and beginning another in the bedroom you grew up in. Thanks for that image.

Anonymous said...

There's something inherently beautiful and cyclic about ending one journey and beginning another in the bedroom you grew up in. Thanks for that image.

Jason said...

Great post, I hope you found all you were hoping to out west. Since you are still there, I get the feeling you did.