Coming Home

It never gets old or less exciting.

Coming home.

Back to my childhood house, back to the Valley.

         Back to my family.

                   Back home.

There is a sensation wrapped around the journey, my trip back East.

The familiar packing. The laying out of jackets and my Bean boots for the muddy fields.

Always remembering to buy and pack those pita chips my mother loves.

There is a preparation of my heart and mind to be home once again.

There is an anticipation, a feeling, of when I know I need to leave.

I can go for months without being there and then eventually my body hits a wall of deprivement.

My heart yearns, it begins to ache, for the sight of the Valley.

To be there among the farmed fields, to walk out to the back pasture, to run on the tracks,  

      to be in the barns, to hear the creak of our upstairs hallway.

 To simply be on I-90 driving home.

The car ride invigorates me. I never seem to mind it.

The 8-hour road trip gives me the time to cross over from one home to another.

To transition.

I blare the songs I grew up with through my car speakers.

The music serving as my own soundtrack, a backdrop to the scenery that changes with every passing mile. I drive from the suburbs of Detroit, past the Great Lakes, by the windmills and plains of Canada.

Entering New York, I always feel a little bit easier.

Almost like I belong again.

Even though my license plate reads Michigan, I am a New Yorker through and through.

The city names, the highways, the landscape become all so familiar.

The smell of the manure covered fields, the farms dotted along the freeway, the foothills slowly emerging along the horizon. The carved-out rocks that rise along the road, the sharp icicles dripping down their dark walls. Remains of the Erie Canal, the melting Finger Lakes, the fading green Native lands.

These are the characteristics of home. Of coming home.

The closer I get, the louder I sing.

The faster my heart beats, for the homecoming it has so long yearned for.

After months of patiently waiting to take in the view of my Valley, and to hear the howling Cherry Valley winds, it is now time to be there again.

I always drive a little slower on the back roads leading home.

I try to take it all in. Savor every glimpse of this heaven on Earth.

Nothing changes, I know these roads from memory, from running down them when I was young.

When I turn onto our road, a wave of joy comes over me.

I feel as if I am coming home for the very first time, although it could be the thousandth.

When the Valley comes into view, I want to scream.

I roll down my window, no matter the weather, and reach out and try to grab the ridgeline.

The one I have tattooed under my right arm.

I beep as I turn into the driveway, always parking under the trees by the sidewalk.

I see my father’s head pop above the kitchen curtains. He waves.

He comes out to help me with my bags as my mother waits by the front door for her long-awaited hug.

It is a Bridgerton type of homecoming. The daughter who moved away has come home to us once again.

It is always the same.

The smell of our house. A warm and comforting mixture of soy candles and Melaleuca oils.

My room is always made up to perfection.

Clean towels and extra blankets laid out on the chair in the corner, fresh flowers on the nightstand.

Old pictures of Gramma and I, or the cousins, line my dresser. A candle always waiting to be lit.

It is flawless. My room, the house, the creak of the upstairs floor.

My heart instantly settles into the routine of being here again.

The first day I always stay close to home.

I join my mother for morning coffee, I run around the block, getting my lay of the land.

I put on my Bean boots and hike out back, saying hello to the ancient trees, the creek, my sister’s cabin as it peaks out over the hills of the back pasture.

I stand over the worn tractor bridge and remember the forts of my childhood, built along every curve of the creek.

It is almost like the Queen has returned to her kingdom.

    Her Valley.

It is almost like I have never left at all.

The view of the foothills, always remaining the same, always looking stellar.

Always being the most consistent thing in my life.

Knowing that wherever I travel, no matter how long I am gone for, they are always waiting for me here.

      To come back to.

           To love, to cherish, to adore.

There is no greater feeling than coming home.

The void and the hole that grows in my heart from being away for so long, is replaced with this reclaimed energy and joy that only the Valley and home can give me.

Filling me up and nourishing me until the next time I will be back.

        Until the next time I will come home.