(no subject)
Jan. 1st, 2008 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Kate Wolf was on the radio, Golden Rolling Hills of California, and I was suddenly hit by homesickness so strong I thought maybe I wouldn't be able to breathe.
Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be as happy as I was there. I miss the dusty back roads of Northern CA. I miss the scent of the ocean on the air, the warm breeze through the giant eucalyptus, the rows and rows of strawberry bushes, the laughter of the migrant workers' kids. I miss the bone-dry poverty and the hills eaten to stubble by livestock. I don't know how a birthplace can get into your bones so deep, and I don't know if there's any going back. A lot of it has been paved over since I was a kid there. Still, there's certain place that just seem to have a resonance in my heart -- healing, caring, comforting. Southern Wales felt similar to that. Other places have different resonances, but not "home" resonances -- Ohio under the summer sun was the most beautiful place I've seen, and driving through Arizona and New Mexico is so desolate and perfect that it makes my heart ache. Vermont was different, too, gorgeous but not as warm in my heart. Even Texas, in the two weeks of spring when the wildflowers bloom, is beautiful in its way, like bluebonnets for the soul. But not home.
I'm afraid that if I go back there now, though, it won't be home anymore. It's so wrapped up in my childhood that I know it wouldn't be the same. If I go now, with my issues and my depression and my being flat broke, I'm afraid the disillusionment would destroy what's left of "home" in my heart. The strawberry fields are emblematic of a broken system relying on near-slave labor by illegal migrants. The migrant kids I went to elementary school with -- there's as much heartbreak there as in any given afternoon of Lifetime TV, and a lot less happy endings.
Maybe I need to move on. Grow up. Stop hanging onto Northern California, which is irretrievably tied up with my mother, because she died not long after we left there. Maybe I'm stuck in the past. It's a beautiful past, though. There's some saying about leaving home, but I forget what it is... I miss home.
Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be as happy as I was there. I miss the dusty back roads of Northern CA. I miss the scent of the ocean on the air, the warm breeze through the giant eucalyptus, the rows and rows of strawberry bushes, the laughter of the migrant workers' kids. I miss the bone-dry poverty and the hills eaten to stubble by livestock. I don't know how a birthplace can get into your bones so deep, and I don't know if there's any going back. A lot of it has been paved over since I was a kid there. Still, there's certain place that just seem to have a resonance in my heart -- healing, caring, comforting. Southern Wales felt similar to that. Other places have different resonances, but not "home" resonances -- Ohio under the summer sun was the most beautiful place I've seen, and driving through Arizona and New Mexico is so desolate and perfect that it makes my heart ache. Vermont was different, too, gorgeous but not as warm in my heart. Even Texas, in the two weeks of spring when the wildflowers bloom, is beautiful in its way, like bluebonnets for the soul. But not home.
I'm afraid that if I go back there now, though, it won't be home anymore. It's so wrapped up in my childhood that I know it wouldn't be the same. If I go now, with my issues and my depression and my being flat broke, I'm afraid the disillusionment would destroy what's left of "home" in my heart. The strawberry fields are emblematic of a broken system relying on near-slave labor by illegal migrants. The migrant kids I went to elementary school with -- there's as much heartbreak there as in any given afternoon of Lifetime TV, and a lot less happy endings.
Maybe I need to move on. Grow up. Stop hanging onto Northern California, which is irretrievably tied up with my mother, because she died not long after we left there. Maybe I'm stuck in the past. It's a beautiful past, though. There's some saying about leaving home, but I forget what it is... I miss home.