Going Home

It's been too long, I said, when Mom picked my tired, sick self up from the Columbus airport on Friday.  I was home.  Although I was tired, stuffy and weary throughout most of the visit, it was refreshing and wonderful to be around my family and friends again.  The thing about Columbus is that nothing changes (it seems): Mom made lasagna (that, as always, was the best she'd ever made), Barnes & Noble employed much of the same crew, had the same regular customers in the cafe, the freeways were predictably empty, and my allergies flaired in the Ohio Valley's elements.

My sister, mother and me have the most natural, off-beat humor around each other, and on this visit we defaulted immediately to a certain ping-pong humor, playing off each other's jokes and laughing nonstop as we cruised the city, running miscellaneous errands.  We were stopped in a grocery store parking lot the first night, behind an old truck filled to the brim with broken furniture and other trash.  As four presumably-related people ran around to the truck bed, straightening things so that they wouldn't fall and tightening bungee cords around faded wood stands and chairs, we were quiet a moment--probably for the first moment since I'd landed in the city.  Then my sister said, in a serious tone, "We're headed to CaleefornIA," and we all laughed like school children.  As we sang the Beverly Hillbillies song in that parking lot, I realized how easy it is for me to feel at home again.

When I visited the B&N, it seemed little had changed.  Sadly, there were fewer customers than I remember seeing in the store when I worked there.  Seeing my book on the shelves, however, was a great feeling, one that reminded me how important that job and store had been to my transition.  How important it had been that I discovered (or rediscovered) my love for literature some seven years ago.

As the weekend progressed, I continued to feel at home, only more so than I maybe ever did before leaving.  It's funny how that works sometimes, and how a little perspective can truly make a person like me appreciate the journey I've been on.  From a near-hopeless, anxiety-ridden ghetto girl to a, well, far more hopeful, educated woman, who has more support and less anxiety than she could've even imagined those years ago.

Perhaps, some of us have to leave in order to appreciate what was there.