I was reminded today, as my brother and I were talking before I left to come back to Bloomington, of all the seemingly ordinary parts of being at home that actually mean a lot when I think about them.
There’s an evergreen in our backyard that I got on Arbor Day some 16 years ago. When I brought it home from my second grade classroom we had only lived in our house for about six months, and the tree was about 18 inches tall. Today it stands more than twenty feet tall, towering over our backyard and - now that I think about it - most of the neighborhood. Recently my dad trimmed away the lower foot or so of branches. They were very wide and got in the way of mowing a good portion of the yard.
I can’t help but see some symbolism there. I don’t think my parents have been or ever will be as close as they were when my brother and I were still living there. I feel that in a lot of ways our leaving home has kind of cut away at the foundation of what kept them together. Hell, Mother’s Day wasn’t even very enjoyable. My mom spent too much of it (and this is just my opinion) making snippy little remarks to or about my dad. Yet, they’ll never leave each other - for good or bad.
There’s also the rusty circle in the driveway where a chained basketball net began to rust and drip its rust onto the concrete driveway. The basketball hoop has been gone for almost four years now, and while I don’t miss it (there’s two nice full courts 100 yards away at the neighborhood park) I miss the memories I had there. I can remember countless hours when I was in elementary school playing one-on-one versus my old man, him often using his height and weight to push me around. He’d irritate me and usually beat me, but he never pushed too hard. He did it because he knew I cared about the sport, and he wanted to make me better.
As he got older, we played less and less one-on-one. When I was in high school, it was usually me shooting free throws or him rebounding jump shots for me, hundreds of them. We’d talk about life, about school, or music, maybe even politics. I kind of miss having that hoop there. My dad has gotten back into shape at the age of 60, now weighing less than I do. It’d be fun to have a little one-on-one game, even if it was pretty light-hearted.
And the sound of the trains going by. I miss those. As my brother remarked, it’s not until you come back that you actually can hear them. The railway that runs through Valpo sits just a block away, on the other side of the park. Living there though, you grow so atuned to the sound that you don’t even notice it. But now I do. When I come home I hear the trains, each one of them that rolls by.
I’m not sure if any of this makes me entirely sad or happy when I reflect back on it. I guess it’s just growing up. Part of it feels entirely like home, but much of it doesn’t. Somehow my gut tells me the next part of my journey is going to take me far away from home, but maybe that’s what I need. I seldom visit, this my first time back (for a whole two days) since New Year’s. We’re all just trapped in time, and there’s no escaping it - not forward or back. It just is what it is.
CNN: Majority of Dems want Clinton to be V.P.
