The wagon train left today for the West. The Wild West, where you can see forever without the massive forests left behind "out east." Where the mountains burst from the earth like they're fixing to boil, and roll up so high it makes your neck ache to look at the top of them. The Rockies, those giant boulders stacked across a limitless land filled with miners seeking the wealth they have to offer. You can hear drums beat as you cross New Mexico and the wind swifting through the wings of eagles as Arizona appears on its terrace.
Okay, romance aside, I do love going home sometimes--to smell what's left of the orange blossoms, see what else has been torn down or remodeled. Talk fast again. Use short fat butter cubes instead of southern long skinny ones.
It's all about the people. I feel like a pea back in its pod for a vacation, mingled with all those other familiar peas. Then there are the baby sweet peas I barely know, separated by miles, years and lack of history together. At least I know their names, thanks to the diligence of my geneaological relatives, which I will be memorizing for the next week. But they don't know I pushed their grandma down the stairs a hundred years ago when we were kids, and don't really care much. They've been pushing their cousins down the stairs too and some day their great great grand neices won't know it. Or care.
I somehow feel reincarnated. I had a childhood then messed that up by growing up, then messed that up by moving so far away from home. Now I have the perfect life. Which is sweeter? My only choice is the life I'm in now. But the other two are still here, competing for my emotions and love. I have to put them each in chambers in my mind and keep opening the doors to check on everybody. Maybe it's a mental visit I do. This time it'll be a real visit to my past--kind of scrambled with an altered present. Seems like a one-way street since I can't drag everybody out east (south) with me to put them into the same conundrum.
I need a shrink.
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