Seems to me there are lots of reasons to visit old places and friends. And also just as many or more reasons to avoid ever doing it. I think I am watching everyone, including myself, make some of these choices, with all distinct and specific motivation, or for no real reason at all. Life is funny and strange and as oddly predictable as it is unpredictable.
Maple and I had been throwing around the idea of a big road trip back to Wisconsin and the small towns we lived in for a number of years. But it just felt too big. Too far. Too many complex feelings to wade through. But the clock worked her magic on us and we went from having all of the time in the world to only one more spring with our girl home and if we didn’t make the journey now, who knows when the window would present itself again.
Chris couldn’t come. Work and animals. And I do not think he feels the pull in the same way. It is more faint for him, a distant hum. Eider thought he might but then staying with dad and all of those sweet lacrosse drills in the afternoon held bigger appeal. Even though I miss him mightily, especially when we were in Mount Horeb, where he was some sort of kid king of the neighborhood hooligans. Freddy would come cuz where I go he goes and I also I want so badly for him to feel a sense of belonging in these places where we lived without him. I want him to feel his place in the big fabric that weaves together our family story.
Maple was the impetus. She had a pull and there was never any doubt that this journey was most certainly for her. I think it makes sense. She is standing on the edge of her big launch and the desire to retrace the path that led her to this point seems like the most natural longing in the world. She wanted to see the faces of her first friends, wander the streets that she memorized before all others, and feel herself both little and grown all at once. So we brought her to her first home. And her second.
Mount Horeb is a far easier visit. Less complicated. Not too loaded. We loved living there but we were never meant to stay. Visiting with our favortie people and places there is so enjoyable and we all jump right in like no time has passed. Viroqua is not this way. It is complicated and has all the feels of something more subterranean. We have to be willing to dig a little. It is strange to visit the place that I thought I would stay forever. And when I didn’t live some place where I felt the same, the visit is a dark trigger. Murky and muddled and mixed up.
But now we do, or I do at any rate- live in a place I whole heartedly want to live- and that same complexity is not with me this trip.
We are staying with one of my oldest friends here. A part time witch who always has something casually occult for us to run our fingers through. This morning in was runes. Maple drew one first and would you believe she pulled the Journey rune? Everything leading up to this particular pilgrimage and all of the significance of what is to follow emblazoned on one small mark, on one small stone. Of course she did. She is on track with herself more deeply than I can have any sense of. She knew she needed to come here, connect with these distant parts of her histroy and shed what she needs to shed in preparation for her first big solo act. It is all so perfectly clear.
I drew the partnership rune which seems like it may have been my only option. It had to be. The symmetry of the space I hold and occupy and serve in direct relationship to my spouse and to myself is the central context, the mood that underlies all else. Everything has been leading me here and I think loving and being loved by Chris was always my path to the divine. I have no idea how something so magnificient was built out of all that raw material we started out with, but the privilege to continue to choose to walk along him and share our work in the world is the heart of everything that matters most to me. It is the essential, uncondtional grace of my life.
This morning he took himself into the ER. Over 1000 miles from where I sit. He was uneasy with some chest pain and aware of his medication’s particular side effects. They are running all of the tests and looking deep and monitoring him. It sounds like he is fine, but scared, but second guessing the messages his body tells him because he has learned he has to. That is the tricky game of cancer. Do you know or don’t you? Is this real or is your mind taking you for a spin? He is ok. He is headed back home. And I am sitting on this hillside in my old hometown watching my child who never lived here bounce on my oldest friend’s trampoline. The one she got for her grandkids. Maple is at her shop on Main Street up to her elbows in vintage and happy as a clam to be fed as much canned fish as she can stomach by her first auntie/mentor/substitute mother. Life is strange and continues to reveal and reveal and reveal all of these parts and how they had to break apart and grow back together and it was all always supposed to be just like this no matter how good it feels or how much it hurts. What a perfect journey.