pull up a chair

dispatch from 02139 (but not for long as a temporary return to roots is upon us…..)

oh, lordy, i miss that place. miss that ol’ stove. miss the oven that merely vaguely cranks the heat you so politely request.

i miss the creaking old planks at the top of the stairs. i miss the stairs, and the wall of family pictures that always slows my climbing so i can blow a kiss to one of the heroes that hang there in frames.

truth is, i miss everything about it. home, that is. i ache deep inside to be back inside my own four walls, to be under the roof that shelters me, and the skylights that let me in on the ping-ping-ping of the rain, or the hush and the shadow of snow as it drifts.

i’ve had to keep it corked all these months, had to keep it bottled inside, for fear i’d burst open with the heartache of missing a place that is as much a part of me as my right or my left arm, really.

i’m a little bit scared to come home, knowing that it’ll wrench off the nice safe scab that’s grown over the hurt place, the part of me that misses my old familiar house, the one we’ve stitched and embroidered, hammered and tweaked, to make it the very reflection of our deep down insides.

it’ll be hard as heck to leave again, just a few short days after i get there. much as i love it here. much as i’ve come to feel a bit like this, too, is home — of sorts. though it will always be home away from home. not home, the real thing.

i can barely stand to picture my garden trail, and the bench that sits in just the right spot, at just the right angle, so i can keep watch on the kitchen herbs, on the window box, on the hydrangea and fern, and my old-fashioned country mailbox, where i store all my garden tools and a fat ball of twine.

i wonder if my red bird has missed me.

i’ve surely missed him. i’ve not seen a red bird since i got here. score one for the midlands of the country.

anyone who’s rustled around here at the table for any short bit of a while knows that i am pretty much a through-and-through nesty girl. one who’s not so inclined to be yanked at the roots, settle in a thousand miles from home.

oh, this veritas university has its delights. and i’ve sucked the sweet marrow out of each and every one of them. and i’ve made friends i’ll keep for forever. and i’ve swallowed ideas that will spark a lifetime of stretching. so there is not one iota of complaint, not one dash of wishing we’d not taken this sumptuous adventure. it’s just that it’s hard to be away from a place that pumps life in your veins.

i miss my lane, i miss my chock-a-block alley, and the dear souls who dwell there. you find out, when you’re far away, just whom you miss, who pops into your daydreams, who stirs your soul.

i picture myself rolling around on the living room rug. and jumping up and down on the bed, on my knees, a pose that might kill me. or cripple me.

but it does capture the joy, the effervescence of being back home. though just for a little short while.

being an all-or-nothing sort of girl, i’d probably stay here in new england if given my druthers. only because it would be easier, in a deep down sort of a way, to not have to lock up and leave again. i’d rather settle in for good. be home, home at last. and not ever leave.

but my little fellow has been quite a brave soldier all these months, throwing himself headfirst into the glories of cambridge. and he is aching to get back to his dearly beloved sixth-grade pals. he’s already told me that he will spend the days bouncing from house to house, rarely home. i shouldn’t plan on seeing much of his sweet little face, he warned.

and the college fellow, too, he’s itching to be back in his very own room, the one halfway up the stairs. at thanksgiving, when here in the aerie, he mentioned how it was all fine, and a lovely place to sink into, but not really home home.

he, too, is requesting a dose of the real deal.

so it seems i’m tagging along as chief chaperone. their papa is staying behind — here to nestle the cat, but also for a stiff dose of quiet study time, as he has a class to teach come january and a book to write, and nothing serves those masters better than unencumbered, uninterrupted days of pure quiet.

we’ll fly in on christmas morn, a magical inbound flight if ever there was.

i picture my weepy ol’ eyes, craning over the boys who always claim the window seat, peering down on the itty-bitty houses as they come into view, as we soar in over the edge of the lake, as we catch the first glimmer of shimmering stacks rising up from the prairie.

i’ll be scanning the landscape for the dots and the treetops that signal my house.

i’ll be knowing that far down below, christmas unfolds all across the metropolis. and at my old shingled abode, not far from the shore of that great roiling lake, just there under the locust, i’ll imagine the old place warming up, purring again. even though there won’t be a stick of christmas inside.

but it’d better watch out, that unadorned cottage, for the mop-top crew of three homesick hearts just might be tempted to leap from the plane, drop from the sky, and slide down the chimney.

best ho-ho-ho christmas i can deeply imagine.

so it goes from here on a rainy, windy cambridge morn, as i wait for a bus from collegeville to pull into the station, as i wait to be four of us, instead of just three of us. it hardly feels christmasy here. but maybe back home it’s all frothy and white. 

big news of the week was that my old newspaper, the chicago tribune, asked me to write an essay for christmas, so it’ll be online any hour now, and in the sunday paper. an essay on coming home for christmas. 

so what’s the best ho-ho-ho christmas you can deeply imagine?