Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Somewhere Other Than Here
How do you feel about your home town. I think we can usually separate into two or three groups. The people who wanted out of it, and usually these people find the first bus ride out and leave, coming back to visit on some holidays and long weekends. There are also those who will never leave, not because we cannot, but because we do not want to. We drive around the streets past all of the places we used to play and live and love every square inch of it. Then there are those who are either indifferent to their surroundings and don't care and those that can't leave for various reasons. I am the one that will not leave because I love it here. I don't feel the need to leave, just because. I drive around the places I have gone thousands of times and I see my own ghosts. Ghosts of playing in the yard with a football. Throwing it up in the air and running after it to catch it for the game winner. I see ghosts of fishing in the Detroit River in mid winter dodging float chunks of ice. I see ghosts of hanging out in coffee houses and gas stations lying about who I was and what I was doing here. I see ghosts of getting arrested and going to jail, which I should regret, but I don't. I could not imagine walking away, this feels like home to me. If you are the one who needed to get out, more power to you, starting over has always been something I admired, but that wasn't me. This is. I went to the pier last night with a friend that I also could not leave and just sat there talking about how the waves still move the same direction and the moon still hits the water just right to point an arrow to somewhere other than here. I sometimes just drive around all of the houses I have lived in, which is a lot. I moved almost every year, but always in the same area because my mom ran a day care and couldn't move too far from her clients. It is a weird feeling to go somehwere and feel exactly the same, but older.
I'm a simple person to figure out. I usually write it all down here. I try not to pretend to be anything. I am what I am and that's good enough until it's not anymore. I want my kids to remember me smiling when I'm gone. Integrity is the very basis of a good life. I love my God, my wife, my kids, my friends, and I try to love all of the rest of you.
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I am the person who loves where I came from too. I left for 4 years when I was 18 to NC, I could not wait to get home. I still hang out with my bestfriend who I grew up with in the old neighborhood, we have known each other for almost 40years, he now lives down the street from me in our new neighborhood. I still like to drive by and see my old house and the streets and the empty movie theater. My friend and I talk about some of the same ghosts you have spoke of for the most part, the fun we had growing up in Baltimore in the 70's.There were 4 of us originally, now it is just us 2. We lost some good friends one to violence and drugs and some to alcohol. Our lives are who we are. Those things good and bad and there were plenty of both. I would only change one thing of my past. But, even that is an important part of who I am today.
ReplyDeleteMy home town is a city of about 40,000 people or so. I live in a city now of over 4 million. It's a huge difference and the size of my home town is one of the best things about it now, whereas growing up I thought it was small. I have become accustomed to metropolis but I'm still a country boy and always will be. I still refer to it as home.
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