Becoming and Coming Home

An ode to a return

Each time I come home, I simultaneously feel both familiarity and foreignness, all the more intensely with every visit. My hand falters when I reach for the light switch in a dark room, the nerves of my fingertips surprised by its American silhouette. Construction on the highway makes the routes I’ve taken for years unrecognisable. I hadn’t noticed how much my appearance changed until I saw myself in the mirror of my teenage bedroom. I’ve been gone six months, but the changes that have taken place in my absence have made themselves acutely visible. I wander through this old life of mine as if its new. And it is, in a way: looking at it physically, human adults experience complete skin regeneration every month or so. The cool, fresh Virginia air is hitting this skin of mine for the first time. But regardless of how much changes externally, the body always remembers. I hugged my best friend and it felt like I saw her last week. I unconsciously sit in my designated seat at the dining table. Still, when I walked through the door a week ago, suitcase in hand, I could smell our house the way it smells to guests, a harsh reminder that I’m simply a visitor.

Here is “Adult” by Linda Gregg:

I’ve come back to the country where I was happy 
changed. Passion puts no terrible strain on me now. 
I wonder what will take the place of desire. 
I could be the ghost of my own life returning
to the places I lived best. Walking here and there,
nodding when I see something I cared for deeply. 
Now I’m in my house listening to the owls calling 
and wondering if slowly I will take on flesh again.

I have been reflecting on this poem a lot as I make my rounds, feeling out how this current version of me experiences my old haunts. My teenage bedroom, for example, was always a place of escape. It was a moment of quiet among the bustle of guests and visiting family members, a place where I was surrounded by remnants of joy I cut out and pasted on my walls. In the years I felt lanky and awkward, stumbling through phases and friendships that would later prove themselves to be temporary, this space reminded me of the self I hoped would flourish and bleed until I could render the mess into a life. The catch is that life is, and will always be, messy. I put a lot of pressure on myself to return as something worthy of arrival. Maybe I am still stumbling into adulthood, having tripped into it before I was ready. But last weekend, as I stood through an hour and a half of customs lines, my parents stayed on the other side. When I hobbled through the arrivals gate, they took my suitcases and kissed my cheeks. Is this not worthiness? To return home and have every self be welcomed, after all this time?

by Gershon Benjamin

As I learn to succumb to the stagnant plains of adulthood, I am trying to embrace the stillness. My sisters go back to school tomorrow, my parents go back to work, and I will spend the next two weeks or so before Christmas quietly reconciling with this new balance of past and present. The future is no longer a distraction: there’s no degree or graduation to work toward. It’s time to relish in what’s known. Having my little coffees before work, going on walks around the neighborhood, reading in the sunroom — and knowing, at the end of the day, someone will always come home. There is still a place for me here. Home is a place to let go, to relieve, to watch the birds. I know eventually I “will take on flesh again” in my active adult search for Meaning. For now, I let go. I find snippets of meaning in small things.

James Longenbach writes in “Barcarolle”:

Is it so small a thing
To have enjoyed the sun,
To have lived lightly in the spring,
To have loved, to have thought, to have done?

There is a tree outside my bedroom window, planted just before my parents bought our house, and it has grown with me over ten years. It changes with the seasons, and over the years I’ve watched it grow new leaves and shed them, bare and then bursting with blossoms. Its naked branches hold space for robins and the blue jays and red cardinals. I know they visit all year, but I’m grateful to have a glimpse of them. This tree has its own life, one I spent many years witnessing at a slow pace, living my own in tandem with it. But now, after being away for so long, I notice how much its grown. I listen hard to the songs of the birds, the flutter of their wings, and hope my own growth is the same. Sometimes we can’t see progress until we step far away from it, until we place ourselves back in the position of appreciation, bearing witness to change.

“I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense” by Danez Smith:

O California, don’t you know the sun
is only a god
if you learn to starve for him?
I’m bored with the ocean

I stood at the lip of it, dressed in
down, praying for snow
I know, I’m strange, too much light
makes me nervous

at least in this land where the trees
always bear green.
I know something that doesn’t die
can’t be beautiful.

Have you ever stood on a frozen lake, California?
The sun above you, the snow
& stalled sea—a field of mirror

all demanding to be the sun too,
everything around you
is light & it’s gorgeous & if you stay
too long it will kill you

& it’s so sad, you know?
You’re the only warm thing for miles
& the only thing that can’t shine.

I’ve had a lot of debates, external and internal, about when (if) I plan to move back to Virginia. Slowly, I have become at peace with the possibility. Still, I understand its circumstances: I don’t appreciate the quietness of Suburbia without knowing what its like to be lulled to sleep by passing trains. I cherish the way the golden November sun floats in across our kitchen in the afternoons, setting in a way that’s so rare elsewhere. I look up when I take the bins out to the end of our driveway, eyes wide at the presence of the stars. My appreciation is growing as I am. One day I will return to the orange trees and the blue jays and the dustings of snow, if that’s where the stars lead me. And when I do, I hope I can embrace this world and everything in it, all the wonderful people and things that have been waiting, so patiently, for my return.

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I’ve got five weeks left at home, which simultaneously feels like a long time and no time at all. I will take it day by day, stretching every drop of sunlight as best as I can. Life is slower here. (Which is also why this is coming out quite late — I think sometimes it’s hard to step away from a place so enticingly familiar, so prone to burial, in favor of reflection. Please forgive me!)

I hope you’re all experiencing some winter sun and enjoying the holidays with your loved ones.

Much love,

<3

Tara