One Midnight In June

"Hey it's good to be back home again....."

I have lived here longer than I have lived anywhere else in my life. Coming here as a newlywed twenty one year old and leaving as a fifty two year old divorcee, I never thought to come back. Never intended to. Thought I never wanted to and in fact, did so by default one hot midnight in June.

Like the salmon swimming upstream to some half remembered place, I find myself drawn back by forces that are seemingly beyond my control -- still, I am the one doing the swimming. And I've come a long way to get here.

Most of the old familiar places have changed beyond recognition and many of those "dear hearts and special people" are gone away to what I hope are better places. I'm not here because of anyone, unless it is my daughter and granddaughters, but that feels more like a perk, a sweet surprise, as I get to know these beautiful young women who are my descendants.

I am simply here and until tonight as the growing pains eased up some, I wasn't sure if I even wanted to be. I thought I wanted adventure and experiences and I have had those, wonderful ones, even some great ones. Now I want something else and I think I may be on the verge of discovering it.

I feel a strange connection that I am not familiar with tonight. I recognize it as that yearning I remember from being a three year old in Champagne and a young adult in Kansas. I had it when I took my children to the Rocky mountains on vacation and again when I woke up and looked out upon the Smokey Mountains of North Carolina. It is the warmth that spread over me during my first sunrise in Yosemite and standing on a rocky mesa in Chaco Canyon. It is a yearning to become one with that warmth, to snuggle into my place in this world and salve the homesickness I seem to have been born with. I feel as if I am almost there tonight.

Why? I honestly don't know. I left here shortly after a dear friend put a gun in his mouth and ended his life, rocking my world and everyone else's who knew him. Today a young man did the same thing, ending a life that had just gotten underway, shaking my granddaughters to the core, and it occurred to me that I want to make a difference.

Unfettered by all the things that tied me to this world in the past, I am now free to do something. It doesn't have to be grand, or exotic. It simply has to be useful. I think I can do that here.