Something calls you home, asks you what you have been doing all this while away,
Stuck in a rut, stuck somewhere, far away from a loving hand, far away from the weaving winds, from the cool breeze on a summer evening, distant from the comfort of enveloping arms and warm skin and that old cup, chipped at the rim from which you sipped milk when you were young, then tea on evenings with your parents, as you were growing up.
You remember the day you started noticing their fine lines and greying hair on one of your short visits that your mother always used to complain about. But you always had an excuse.
You remember watching them walk around the house and they had gotten slow in their movements, you notice the little changes in the house and it all points towards lethargy of old age. You wonder for a while how quickly they have grown old and how you didn’t notice it in all of your yearly visits home.
As you talk, you realize how your mother has stopped complaining about your short visits and your father, who wasn’t much of a conversationalist, has started narrating to you what all the neighbors have been up to while you were away. And you wonder if he is talking to fill the silence in the room, the silence which is requesting you to come back, to stay for a while, to sit in the room you grew up in and look around it, to sit and notice how you don’t fit in anymore and it is not just your size, it is you.
Sometimes when you look out of the bedroom window you see the children playing and whining about their mothers calling them back home and in that moment you would give anything to be on that field and listen to your mother calling you back inside the house from the window.
A lot of success waits for you at the place which you now try to call home, a lot of money, a lot of people too.
You remember the initial days where you were relentlessly yearning to be out there, stay somewhere away from your little house that grew tinier day by day for the great dreams that you have always had. Now that you have achieved the things that you wanted, you ask yourself, was leaving worth it? You never answer it. It’s a looming question just like the silence in the house but when you look at your parents sitting in the garden and sipping tea with the third chair empty beside them, you know the answer.
When they laugh, you think of how many stories you have missed, When they help each other get up from the chair or the bed, you think of how many times you have missed the moment in which you could hold their hands and help them with something as simple as standing up.
Sometimes, when your parents are talking to you on the day before you leave, you sense the hesitation in their weary voice. You know what they are trying not to say just to avoid meeting with the staple answer “Ma, I have too much work waiting for me”
On certain days, you think of taking them with you to the city that made your dreams become your reality but when you look around the place that you grew up in, you would never take that away from them, the feeling of home, the feeling of the warm sun, the garden table and so many little things that you had to give up for the life you wanted to have.
When you travel from your home to the house you have been trying to make into a home, you pass by your entire childhood.
There is a naked feeling, like being in your lover’s arms, who knows each and every inch of you, knitting in and out of your soul, weaving the fabric of memories that flood your mind on days you don’t have to keep up with the new city and its people. You pass by every corner and turn, it reminds you of how life used to be.
Life used to be at home, waking up to your mother’s call, your father playing an old song while he waters the plants and hums. Life now is about the beeping sound in the morning, rushed coffee, and talking to people who would rather not spend time knowing about who you really are.
When that voice in your mind questions you about how have you been away from home for so long, you really don’t know the answer. How?
As time passes, it gets easier and at the same time, it gets harder to stay away from home. Only someone away from home would understand how the walls back home try to pull you back inside and whisper to you to stay for a while.
Somehow in this new city, with all these people around you, you are exactly where you needed to be, at the same time, you are not. You are lost, at the same time found. You are strong at the same time vulnerable. You don’t want to stop, but on some days you wake up wanting to stay still, and something in the air on such days calls you back home to the soft cold winds and your mother’s smile while looking at the long stretch of road in front of the house, bringing you back to her, back home.
You wonder if it is possible to have it all, to be in two places at the same time, to have your old life and your new life coexist without any compromise.
But you know deep down that it is not possible. Life is about choices, and sometimes, the choices you make take you away from the people and places you love.
You try to hold on to the memories, the little moments that make life worth living, the warmth of the sun on your face, the smell of your mother’s cooking, the sound of your father’s laughter.
And maybe, just maybe, someday, you’ll find a way to make peace with the choices you’ve made and find a place where both your old life and your new life can come together, where you can be with the people you love and do the things you love.
But until then, you’ll keep moving forward, one step at a time, holding on to the memories that make you who you are and hoping that one day, you’ll find your way back home.
darkpoetwonders 