Fall is for Homecoming, wherever that is...

Fall has always been my favorite time of year.  Even as a kid, I knew that it forebode the long school year ahead and the distance from that point to the lazy days of summer.  Jennifer  cooked chili yesterday, and Aubrey made cornbread which has become a sort of ritual for us in the fall. We will eat chili at least once a week this time of year.  Starting today football is on every weekend until next year which for a Blue Devil/Panther’s fan can both make or break your weekend.  Last fall was a major life event for me.  I spent most of my weekends, and some days of the week traveling with my sister back and forth to Roanoke to visit my mother in the hospital.  I have every right to hate fall as it brings up some feelings that are better left in the past.  Somehow, I believe that it happened this way for a reason. Maybe that’s how mom wanted it? Fall is supposed to be about homecoming.  Maybe she wanted me to remember this time of year is about family, and being together.  Not just for the good times.  We need to be there for each other through both good and bad.  It’s easy to attribute everyday things like life and death with the song on the radio or the rain— because we all want to find some type of cosmic significance to our lives.

When I was just a child, I remember the little white row house that my sister, my mom, and me lived in on Raleigh Street in Martinsburg, West Virginia.  I was a young no-nothing that had a middling sense of self, zero fear of mortality, and there was nothing to me as cool as my dad.  I had this vivid imagination of what he was doing at any given time.  I told people that he flew planes, and helicopters—everything… I watched movies, movies that I probably shouldn’t have watched as an eight year-old but I did.  Movies like Top Gun and Iron Eagle, and I lived vicariously through these characters and thought my dad was probably 

doing something as cool as Chappie or Maverick.  I remember I had wanted to live with my father at one point.  I remember telling my mother that I wanted to move in with him one day.  She was heartbroken, and I remember feeling terrible asking but didn’t quite understand the significance  at the time.  This plain and commonplace word “home” had no bearing on me at the time.  Home for us was an old house, that needed a lot of work and even more after we moved out. My mother didn’t have much money.  She worked for the school system there, and had a passionate ambition for further education.  Thinking back, we never really had a sense of want in our lives. My sister and I were given every opportunity to participate in sports and scouts, and all other youth activities.  I can remember going to these games and mom sitting there on the side lines.  She was a quiet fan, but she clapped and showered us with compliments when the game was over with the loving bias of a mother. 

In our days of innocence we were entrusted with our own safety at times.  At least that is how I remember it.  I can remember 
autumn days sitting on the porch, playing in the back yard with my sister and the neighbor kids while we all waited for mom to come home from her graduate school classes. Here she was, raising two kids and going to school in the evening after working all day.  Even though,  I can’t imagine allowing my daughter to watch her siblings for a few hours.  As a kid, it was pretty neat.  I remember we would be home alone for a couple of hours while mom was at class, I think one of the neighbors would look in on us to make sure we were still alive.   We had to stay in the house or the back yard.  When it was dark or raining, we had to entertain ourselves.  We would watch movies we had recorded on VHS tapes from HBO.   We would watch a rotation of all the 80’s classics which provided my sister and I a rich education in 80’s culture and cool.  We loved those movies, and even today can share a random quote from one of them and smile knowingly.  Our little house was small, and had many problems.  I remember we used to crack the window to get the fall air to circulate through the house.  I always loved the cool air of fall, and the change of colors on the trees. I used to roam the block when mom was home. We would walk everywhere. To the grocery store. To the arcade. I used to blow my whole thirty-dollar paycheck, from delivering a local buyers-guide  door to door, at the arcade and local deli.  It’s long gone now, and replaced by some other business.  If my mom knew of some of the crazy things I used to do as a kid, she wouldn’t have been happy about it.  I was insulated by the ignorance of youth and the always safe place to land at home.  I remember mom would put so much effort into trying to cook these great meals for my sister and me.  Like most kids, we had our favorites but she insisted that we have a more advanced palette. Some meals were notably not for me then and maybe even now, but most were good.  Now that I am older, and feeling much older lately, I can’t help but try to define home.  I want a place where my kids can come back to, and show their kids, and share the fond memories of childhood.  I don’t have that really.  I don’t have a place to call home.  There’s so many great quotes filled with beautiful words to describe home not being a physical place but an emotional one.  I find some solace in that because it’s familiar.  My mom was always home to me.  Even though I had this picture of what life should be like as a kid, and how much I wanted to be my father or even someone else on any given day.  I remember being jealous of some kids that had more, and got to do more as a child and not knowing the great fortune that I had at the time in having the love of my mother.

So it’s not quite fall but it’s starting to feel like it.  The air is cooler.  The sounds of football can be heard over the tree line from the high school.  I’ve got a jacket on today even though I probably don’t need it.  I love the colors of fall, the brown and orange.  The flannel shirts, and denim jackets. Not so much the pumpkin spice…  Yet, I sit here and I can’t help but feel different.  Fall is a time for homecoming.  I yearn for home now more than ever.  Even to this day as I start to think about the home that I am creating for my children, and the vibrant memories I hope they have of Fall Saturdays with each other, and their parents I yearn for home.  It’s now been 11 months since I lost mine.  So as the leaves start to change, and start their graceful journey through the air to the ground, I will think about you.  I would give everything to be able to go home again.