Who says you can’t go home again?
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- January 6, 2024
- 1138
An open letter to the state of Ohio:
Gotta tell ya … I’m more than just a little anxious about moving back to my hometown after spending the last 23 years on the beach.
Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the point.
Things are not going to be the same as they were when I left, nor will the people I once knew and grew up with. Some are dead, sad to say, and I’ll be walking among memories for being absent.
That’ll take some getting used to.
When my wife and I first conceived the notion that this might be the ideal time to consider a homecoming, I sort of had my fingers crossed, not intentionally lying, more like wishing for a little luck.
How is it the same gesture can mean such opposite intentions?
Not that it matters now; I mean the moving van’s going to be in the driveway in a matter of hours, and I still haven’t finished my share of the packing, owing to the notion that I must transport everything back to the place we left at the turn of the century.
I ought to have seized this opportunity to shed all but the essentials: family photo albums, letters that still matter, records, books, tapes and CDs, not to mention grade cards, diplomas, plaques, trophies. You can see where this is going, a futile dead-end, doomed gesture.
But I meant well.
“Looks like we’re gonna need one of the big trucks,” the moving guy said, “maybe a 40-footer. Sure you can’t part with those old baseball cards? Or those rock concert T-shirts? Even getting rid of that brittle collection of wildflowers you saved would help a little.”
I shook my head, and my wife wrote the check for half the job.
“It’s no use,” she said, sensing a kindred soul. “Just go with it.”
In my defense, I’d like to enter into evidence the fact that I’ve trashed two vintage speakers, three almost-working turntables, and more than a dozen gizmos and gadgets I never learned to use, including a like-new fountain pen I got as a graduation gift.
Time does funny things, especially when you’re about to re-enter a world you left behind 276 months ago. It’s not as if everything came to a freeze-frame halt once my presence was no longer felt.
And that’s where my apprehension kicks into a higher gear. I’ve missed so much, and it’s not as if the parade of life stopped simply because I was gone. Oh, sure, I’ve tried to stay current, but that’s a slapdash patchwork quilt compared with the tapestry that’s been woven in my absence, the day-to-day drama I’ll never fully grasp.
So here’s my plan.
Rather than playing a Rip Van Winkle role, returning to his little town only to find it changed beyond all recognition, I’ll just observe and listen and begin to understand all that’s changed.
Eventually, though some businesses are gone and the streets are different and the people may be unfamiliar, I’ll discover what it was that I missed since leaving 8,400 days ago … it’ll be easy.
I might venture back to church, and I could even be tempted to try league bowling once a week, perhaps putting together a remnant of the team that won a lot of championships all those winters ago.
Someone please cue up the Michael Stanley Band’s “Lover”:
“And so I talk to the night,
I head for the light,
Tryin’ to hold it on the road.
Thank God for the man
Who put the white lines on the highway.”
There it is: That’s what I’ve been waiting for … the quintessential Ohio rock n’ roll lyric, a sublime collection of a few dozen well-written words that, when the time’s right and everything else falls into place, takes a person back even as he’s looking ahead, rolling toward home in early January, leaving the Atlantic coast far behind.
Because it’s going to be OK, and once we set up housekeeping and I find work, things will stabilize after all the worry and uncertainty.
I’ve been gone for more than 200,000 hours, and it’s time to go home for good. The trip we made back last summer for my 50th high school reunion really baited the hook, and by the time we started to talk about it seriously, I could feel the tug of possibility.
January, as faithful readers might recall, has been a very dark month for me, being the page of the calendar that marks the loss of both my mother and my father — Mom in 1981, Dad in 1999. I’ve got a feeling this move, taking place if the fates allow, has the chance to flip the script, turning all that sorrow into a bit of joy.
And it’s not like I have to buy a lot of new clothes; I mean I still have the parka I wore during the blizzard of 1978 and the boots I borrowed from a friend at Notre Dame the year before.
I may not have done much winter driving in Carolina, but as the song goes, I retain faith in the man who put the white lines on the highway back home, and who’s to say he’s not a higher power, guiding us over the 700 miles between me and the place I belong.
Mike Dewey should now be found at 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805, though he will have to rework his email address, which remains Carolinamiked@aol.com. He invites you to stay in touch.