Summer Hiroshima Moon
Back home. Aurora far away, Ruth and Gabe faraway, the mountains, far away. Here the garden is close, the bees, Kate, the dogs, the city. Home.
Each time I go to Denver a piece of me wants to stay. The mountains, the grandkids, a hip urban scene. And yet all of me wants to come home. To come here where my friends are, where our home and land is. Where I’ve lived for the last 42 years. Where my adult memories are.
This American dislocation creates problems for families. My sister in Singapore. Brother in Saudi Arabia. Son in Denver. Son in Georgia. Everybody knows long distance relationships are tough. When they’re this spread out, as many are, it makes holding the family together a bigger, and more important, challenge.
The humidity. Home. The mosquitoes. Home. The lakes. Home. The north. Home. Home takes all these things geography, climate, weather, friends, family, memories, politics, art and wraps them up in a complex package of which we are an integral part. That’s how we know where home is.
It may seem pedestrian in a global age to prefer the particular and the local, but I do. And have. A Midwesterner raised and now an Upper Midwesterner, I’m happy here.