On the question of home

I hate change. Ask anyone who’s known me for any length of time and they’ll say “Amanda watches too much TV and cannot cook to save her life, but those things are okay because she’s generally pretty awesome. Oh, and she hates change more than Fred Phelps hates the world.” Or at least that’s what I’d like to think they’d say.

I know why I watch too much TV, and I know why I'm a terrible cook, but I genuinely don’t know where this bit of neurosis regarding departure from the status quo comes from; I wasn’t violently ripped away from family or home at a young age... nothing traumatic happened at all, really. But I have always stubbornly hated changes big and small, sometimes with better results than others.

I mention this because my recent visit to the Great White North - only my second since truly moving out on my own - simply overwhelmed me with the sheer volume of changes occurring in this place that had unquestionably been my home for so many years. More than the obvious transformation of my sister's graduation (the reason for the trip in the first place), it was the little things that threw me off balance. The first morning, I woke up on an air mattress on the living room floor; the only guest invited to this particular slumber party. My bed is in Lawrence now, of course, and my room has been converted to desperately-needed sewing space, not a guest room. All very logical, but still disconcerting. That afternoon, I went to run errands for my mother, and while I knew exactly which streets to take and exactly when the lights would change, and my license plates blended in with the masses for the first time in months, something felt off. I caught myself looking on the streets and in the stores for faces I couldn’t possibly find – they were over 500 miles away. Some of those that did appear were hauntingly familiar but void of any context or too far removed by time, so we passed one another in silence.

As the week went by, things only got weirder as my family went about their business (jobs, friends, rehearsals, etc.) and I realized that I had nothing to do. I spent afternoons in my pjs taking advantage of a television signal that isn't dependent on tin foil and wind, which was a nice way to recover from the stress of the semester, but after a few staring contests with the dog (she always wins), I grew restless. And so, the intense labor of this poem and sorting out the feelings behind it began. I'm still not sure it does itself any justice, but believe it or not, I'm ready for a change.




Between 1st and 3rd

Fill up the car and hit the road,
no hastily scrawled dashboard directions necessary;
left where the deer (no antelope) play,
left again at the top of the hill, and you’re there:
home.

If only it were still that simple.

Heart pulls southward,
against the cruise control
for the first time -
unclear toward what or whom,
but for ten hours, the sensation is tangible;
landmarks and reminders appear in the rearview.

Arrival never tastes the way it should –
like frosting on a store-bought cake.
Sometimes bitterly sweet,
but more often, full of air.

Within brick walls lies a paradox
of simultaneous same and different.
Everything smells right:
lilacs mix with earthy dust,
but tear-filled eyes are left disappointed.

What was solid rock is now wobbly;
a foundation crumbles,
an aging dog stumbles,
and amidst the emptiness, realization dawns:
memories at these coordinates have transformed
into a fantasy waiting to be found.

June 14, 2010