I was listening to the Bruce Springsteen song from The Rising over and over today as I dusted.
When I was young, I wanted to leave my family, had to go as far away as possible. I was going to explore. Now I think of my thirty-year voluntary separation from them and wonder if it’s time to wander home.
I’ve been retracing my steps this past month, pacing a neighborhood, circling and returning to locations I’ve already visited. And I find new corners in them.
Maybe the city of my childhood also has a new face to show me?
Not only the deadare missing, mourned terribly
But the living too
If you wondered it, even if it’s an inkling, do it. Wander home.
Steph,
Well, I did last May, last Christmas, and the April before that. I’m having a hard time contemplating anything more radical, like moving there, even if just for a few months. I don’t know why I can’t make up my mind.
Usually when I can’t make up my mind it’s because I’m fighting a sense of obligation. I feel I should do it, but something is telling me that perhaps it’s not really what I want. It’s not always so black and white, of course, but sometimes it is, like this: if you have to ask yourself if you’re hungry, you’re not.
That’s a really great point about fighting a sense of obligation. Though sometimes I think the obligation I feel is to stay here, where I have a writing community and other friends, and not do something like rush home.
Still not sure.