Back home, one way or the other

I was born and spent the first 14 years of my life in Pueblo, Colorado, a smallish blue-collar town on the plains in central Colorado. While my time there was by no means idyllic, it was childhood, so relatively simple and uncomplicated.

During a DOD rif, my dad's job was phased in the summer before I started 8th grade, well not so much phased out as relocated 800 miles east near Texarkana.  He could follow it or search for something else in the crumbling local economy.  So he followed.  And we followed.

For two years, we lived in the piney woods of east Texas – big culture shock.  Actually, we lived about a hundred yards across the state line into Arkansas, but we much preferred to think of ourselves in Texas than in Arkansas.  Next, we moved to central Oklahoma for a stormy summer, and then west Texas for my high school years. In truth, all three moves brought significant differences in culture and climate. 

I went to college in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and got married, had two kids, had marital struggles, career struggles, etc. Typical stuff. Through all of that, a part of me longed to return to a home that hadn’t been home in a very long time. It wasn’t a new longing. We drove out of Colorado with the moving truck already hours ahead of us, and all along the road from Pueblo to Texarkana, I left my own trail of breadcrumbs, expecting to one day follow them back, expecting my own Babylonian exile to end.  In time, the breadcrumbs turned to baggage and I came to understand that I had a lot of unresolved issues about all the changes that precipitated our departure from Colorado. If nothing else, I wanted closure.

From college to my late twenties, I didn’t go back. It was on the list of things to do, but there were plenty of things ahead of the list, and it didn’t help that I’d never gotten along, even as a kid, with virtually all the relatives still there.

Then, one fall, I had a conference in Colorado Springs, which is only about 45 minutes north. I decided I’d take an extra day after the conference, go down to Pueblo, and scout around, checking out all the old places I remembered from childhood. I hoped somehow to find at least a little closure. I'd been carrying what had and hadn’t happened for fifteen years, and I was ready to be done with it. Over the years, I’d written stories and poems about a man’s search for a lost child, a child who was in fact, himself.

I set out in the morning, getting into town just past breakfast time, wandering my old neighborhood. Typical return home – it looked pretty much the same, and somehow very different. The neighborhood looked barren, even though it wasn’t – there were plenty of trees and plants in the yards, and most had been around at least fifty years. Also the houses looked smaller, both in height and volume, like they had shriveled up and shrunk down in the intervening years.

I drove to our old houses and found myself feeling curiously detached from them, then headed toward my favorite park and my elementary school.

The park was a nice experience – much bigger trees than those surrounding the houses, including some very memorable ones. I had an early flirtation at one, I faced a bully down at another, and at a third I had established myself as the best climber in my circle of friends. It was in a much better mood that I continued on to my old elementary school, just two blocks away.

I drove around it once, then parked over by the playground next to the gym. I’d walk around a little, then maybe go inside and see what teachers and other staff, if any, were still around.

As I was standing at the fence, about to begin my stroll, a long stream of kids, second or third graders, burst out from the gym, running along the fence line in front of me. Clearly, a gym class had just started, and the first order of business was running a lap or two.

They all trailed by me, one by one. When the last one was easily ten feet past me, the next to the last child, a boy, peeled off from the group and walked back to me very casually.

From about five feet away, he settled himself as though he expected a long conversation, then said to me, “I think I’m supposed to know who you are.” He was studying me, not in a suspicious way, but just like his statement implied – there was something about me that made him wonder what he might know me from.

In that moment, I was enlightened. I had my epiphany, my little slice of samadhi.

No, I told myself, there was no need for him to know me, because I was no longer of that place. All that was essential to me really had moved on years ago. Everything I had come to recover was already in my hands, and had been there all along.

I said, “No, actually, there’s no reason for us to know each other. I haven’t been here since long before you were born.”

He gave a slow, deep nod, like I was really just confirming something he had actually known all along to be true. He was the master challenging the student to speak out and either defend his search or reject his flawed perceptions that had brought him down that path. He compelled me to accept and assert my truth.

After his nod, with no more said by either of us, he turned and trotted back into the stream of children, retaking his place in the line.

I stayed into the afternoon in town, wandering more widely, curious how other places I had known had changed. I drove back to Colorado Springs satisfied that I had seen everything of interest.

The next day, I got on a plane and within hours, I was home.

Really home.

I still had plenty of struggles back home, mostly trying for way too long to make an unworkable marriage work, but a great many things were better in a great many ways.

That moment took place about twenty years ago, now.  Even today, that encounter brings me back to center when I catch myself drifting off.