For the better part of 10 years, that was my home. It’s where my brothers and I would eat, fight, laugh, etc. It’s where we lived the longest. It’s where we found our friends, our enemies. We buried pets, we scraped our knees. We watched our parents fight, we watched them love each other, we watched it all come tumbling down, and we watched each get back up again.
It’s the last home I’ll ever have. To see it in its current context breaks my heart. I feel like we abandoned it on the way to where ever we were trying to go. Lately, I feel like i’m trying to get back there. But it’d never be the same.
As we end this journey and begin a new one, Its time to take heed of what I’ve seen, what i’ve tasted, what i’ve learned over the last 14 days.
I reconnected on this trip with an old friend. She knows who she is, I wont say her name or she’ll get a big head about it (Melissa). We lived a few houses down from each other … she was always a shy girl, and me a shy boy. One day, she too, seemed to disappear. I wondered where she’d gone.
She went off to SF and brought back gold. I really enjoyed meeting her husband, and her kids. And her friends.
Then theirs Little Joey. Broke my heart to leave him. There’s been few things in my life, as constant as my friendship with Kerry. She’s seen me at my worse, hell she’s cleaned up my vomit (though, i still say it was her fault for letting me drink peppermint schnapps after Tequila Tuesday). To see her with her little Putz makes me so happy, even when he tries to break my computer.
(Her husband isn’t so bad either. I’ll treasure the night at Decker’s till the next time we close the next bar down).
Bonfires with the Griese’s and Kirstie Alley will warm my soul when the cold, harsh reality that vacations can’t last forever sets in. They can be revisited, but they will come to an end, on a temporary basis, from time to time.
Love is like a great book, a durable toy, or a twinkie. It’ll be right there waiting, the next time the earth rotates under a Michigan sky.
