Walking Away

Momma I've got two strong hands.
And they're fine as far as hands go.
I can shoulder the future I can face the wind
For the dream that I must follow.
It's a dream that can kill with its beauty,
It's a hurt that can heal with its pain,
And with all of these miles that lie before me
I may never get home again.

-- I'll carry on, song by Rich Mullins

In the Spring of 2002, I remember walking through the campus of the University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill with my older sister. I was 10-years-old, and preparing to move, with my parents and one of my brothers, to Paris, France. While the move sounded exciting and exotic to many I knew, it sounded more like a punishment to me. I'd lived in North Carolina for half of my life, and as far as I was concerned, I could've spent the rest of it there without issue.

My sister herself had experienced a difficult move at a young age, and while sympathizing with me, tried to convince me to see the ordeal in another light. She reminded me of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, of how little Bilbo Baggins was the unwilling subject of an adventure which has chosen him, an adventure for which he had no intention of leaving his comfortable little hobbit hole for. She called me Esbo. More than a couple times, that first year, I wished for my prospective nice hole by the fire and kettle just beginning to sing.

And France was an adventure, and I returned not the same hobbit I had been before. Reverse culture shock was terrible, of course, but even recovering from that, gradually, I discovered a new restlessness that I had not known before. Over the past five years, my dreams have alternated between a number of final destinations far from the Shire (which, conveniently, is now a nickname for my family's homestead). I've dreamed of Europe, and I'm now I'm set on Africa, but Asia was never on the agenda.

True to form, though, after coming back to the Shire not the same hobbit as before, I cannot I stay. I'm setting off again, less discretely than my literary predecessor, at the end of the month. Like any true adventure, Asia chose me, I did not choose it. I chose to help my family, and my oldest brother and his family felt called to the continent. I'm not kicking and screaming now. Now I pack my own bags.

But my attitude towards the change is not the only difference. While I am going with some of family, I am not going with the same company as before. My parents have settled down. I am old enough, now, for my adventures to be my own. I've lived away from home, but I could always visit for the weekends, and I've never had a Christmas without them. My mother is a strong woman, and she has taught me how to work, and how to take care of myself, and now I put it into practice. I don't know if I will be homesick, after so much upheaval throughout my life, it's a strange concept to even have a home to be sick for. But I do have a home. My home is my family.

So I watch autumn creep up on North Carolina. I feed the animals, build fires, and prepare for the winder I will never see. For the past five years my family has been spoiled, it seems, all living within driving distance of eachother. Soon we will be as far away as we can. I'm old enough to take myself, without my parents, but should I be taking care of them?





Sunday Sonnet XXVI

Fall gently greets September rain against
Slate-covered roofs. The promise of a winter
Beacons subtly, repeats, relents.
If leaves don’t fall, the very bark will splinter.
I will not see the snow arrive until
I view the other faces of this world.
And Momma, I’ve got two strong hands that will
Sustain me still where fate has hurled.
I won’t forget this last hiver that I
Missed in my time away. But you have kept
Me safe thus far, so seasons worth a try.
And tired winds may rest where once I slept.

So as the tree must watch her leaves depart
Thus exodus is not the end or start.