Home

A lot has happened, but I don’t have beaucoup energy to go into it all. The salient bit today is about home.

At the beginning of November, I went home to help the OG with some things. Usually, I cannot wait to flee. This is the first time that I can remember when I was resistant to leaving.

Now, there were good reasons to not want to come back to my home of residence – there was clusterfuck after clusterfuck waiting for me. The cavalry I had thought was coming over summer wound up being a ragtag assemblage of injured and sick women and children who expected the fort’s edification to save them. The situation needed all the fort’s resources and depleted our stocks, rather than boosting our offensive.

Plus, pretty much all our stores we thought were on hand, in this analogy, had spoiled or been less than inventoried in some way or form. The Plumber never plumbed; the roofer tore the roof off but didn’t put it back on; skirmishes in the field have lasted for months instead of being a single decisive encounter; every kiss was the first and last. So, returning to that landscape held no draw.

But that wasn’t the biggest reason – those things have been true, in changing form, for years here in Detroit for me.

Since earlier this year, I have been gradually re-engaging my family. I am not sure that I like many of them, really: they are as I would expect. Yet, I feel drawn to them, as though the roots are physical things. I suppose that in my complete failure to establish a viable alternative, my kin has become a sort of floor network. The good thing about coming from a clan culture is that family ties have some weight.

I have, for longer, been feeling the draw of the physical landscape, and there has never been a question that the particulars of my terra originus (I made that up) is where I feel most physically me. Comfortable in my skin, even powerful in a way. I feel connected to the mountains and the filtered light of the woods in a way that I can only describe as feeling right. No landscape will ever trump it, much as I like a beautiful beach. The places I have liked the most around the world have been largely due to similarity to home.

And so while I was there, this time, I started giving family more of my attention. I replastered and painted the OG’s living room, and had dinner with my … the half brother of my step siblings, so let’s just call him a cousin. I had coffee with my oldest stepbrother, of whom I have fond childhood memories. I paid more attention to the OG’s favorite niece, which makes her a 2nd cousin, I think. I flirted with the neighbor next door, though he is too young and has a GF. I looked at houses and imagined being there. And I could.

I used to think that going “home” would feel like it invalidated my whole life. Like the bottom of a failure. I used to say that I would live in a storage unit before I went and lived with the OG. But yesterday, my thoughts were randomly musing and I had this thought/feeling of just wanting to go home.

A few months ago, I had this notion to send out a few cold emails, introducing myself for work. The only response was from the head of home’s department. We had a great phone conversation, and then we had coffee while I was there – it seemed to be good, too. Sure enough, this week, 2 jobs popped up in the dept. So, we’ll see.

The challenge, of course, is that this call may not be much different than so many calls I’ve had in the past. How I imagine it may be radically different, and disappointing, than how it is. I picture myself finally having the social capital I have lacked everywhere else, in spite of my heavy investments of time and service. Whether or not this would really be true remains to be seen. And there is still the challenge of social alienation – I am an outlier in the most progressive of places, so I cannot expect less there.

And yet, the notion of going into the world and then bringing the gifts and wisdom acquired back home to move it forward is the classic quest narrative. As my mother said, if I went back, I would be a returning Master. Perhaps so. I am not sure if that’s important to my ego, but it may be important to a soul journey.