COMING HOME

The die is cast. Contrary to everything I ever thought would occur in my life, it's time to head East, again. I am shocked at this karmic turn of events--and also surprisingly accepting. While I had lit out from there about thirty-five years ago, (over a lost love who was much too old, and a lame-brained plan that if I "proved myself", I might be taken back...)only returning for visits consisting of a few days (and a few fights), I just never believed I would return to northern Massachusetts.

Let me be real: New England courses through my veins. New Englanders are as deep-seatedly fanatical about their small geography as Texans are of their larger one. Equally disconcerting, the somewhat "hidden" belief that "only New Englanders" are serious and sane. Practical. Discerning. Frugal. Hardy. Plain-spoken. Dependable. Well-educated. And much more deeply steeped in all the traditions of America...(Some say that the South never died...well, as we've recently witnessed, neither has the Boston Tea Party.)

I am returning to my blood rooted family. I am returning and trying to re-insert, to re-boot, to re-join them. They have clearly defined roles and hierarchies and I am clearly not part of that well-oiled familial machine--not anymore. Yet, my destiny in the West-- as my eighty year old Mother pointed out: "Well, nothing really works out for you in California, does it?"--has left me burned up and bleeding out.

I understand her persective. Given my professional, money-earning life over the last five years, she's correct. Given my personal life over the last three and a half decades, again, she is batting a perfect score. (As a writer, well, we are all still waiting...the see-saw is holding at mid-point these days...)However, there is one area where she can't discern my wild success--an area that leads back and forth between New England and California in a well-worn track: my friendships.

Sometimes it seems to me that I am living an ancient "teaching fable"--one where the hero has thousands of problems heaped upon her head...she is battered and scarred and torn up into pieces over and again...yet, at the end of the story, she comes upon a fabulous reward. A Higher Power intervenes and suddenly, all the terror, the pain, the losses are forgotten. That which was being sought might not be exactly granted, but instead, something far better is acquired.

All through my life, from early kidhood, till exactly this minute, I have had deep friendships. The kinds of friends who mail you a rusty skate-key, knowing you'll "get it"--because you strapped group-shared-family-skates to your sneakers, the kind needing a key to adjust--and raced each other down Lincoln Street hills, barely avoiding parked cars and moving traffic. Or the kinds of friends who, from thirty-five years ago and a last shared Mai Tai Punch, track you down and bring you back from the brink of desperation, kicking and screaming that you aren't worth the efforts. They don't buy it. They want you home. They are waiting for you to arrive. They don't care who you've become or what you haven't yet accomplished...they remember who you were to them;are interested in who you have grown into. They want to share wisdom they've acquired; war stories and baby pictures and introduce you to their married families. They aren't shy about telling you that you are loved. Don't worry. We will all weather this bad season together. (Just as they all pulled together last winter in the biggest ice-storm in over a hundred years!) You are worth welcoming back. (O New England child. O lost California runaway. Ditch the despair!)

Or the college best friend who has an autistic daughter, now becoming a teen-ager with all the inherent worries that comes with that unfolding--who, even with her own professional life booked to the brim--finds time to cry with you, or laugh with you, or fly and meet you half way between the three thousand miles that separate you, just to spend a night up, drinking coffee and remembering. Or older friends who are "mentors"; who believe in your adult self , reminding you of what you have accomplished in the West. Friends who have seen you in successful times and remember.

Friends weathering foreclosures, divorces, dead babies, bankruptcies and passing parents--sharing the same issues of aging. Friends who "get you", no matter if you don't "get" yourself. Not bound by sibling rivalry, nor familial patterns that help the bloods survive with each other--and which you have excluded yourself from--the friendships I'm speaking of have a different kind of bond. "Found Family"--as opposed to "Blood Family". Just as fierce. Just as intense, but maybe less complicated? (No disrespect to the bloods--they are the people having to "take me in"..."because you are Family...we have to...") Or perhaps, it is because my friends are true peers--touchstones in time--even if our lifestyles are wildly varied. We have witnessed exactly the same histories and histrionics. We have walked on the same paths exactly at the same moments. Our geographies are superimposed in a different way?

In any case, wherever I have travelled in the last thirty-five years, and even before, there have been those friends who have imbued their lives with mine and vice versa. We didn't have to fight for the attention of the same parental units; we didn't have to argue over who got to drive the family car or whose room was the biggest or who got the better Christmas present or party on their birthday. We didn't have to live up to each other's expectations, I guess, at least not in the same way that we did, and do, still, for our parents--regardless of their ages.

There are decided differences between bloods and friends. Both so necessary for a balanced life. I am thankful for that balance. I love my bloods. I love my parents. I love my friends. At this single pinprick point in time, I am in absolute need of both. No lie.

So, even as I worry what next chapter is unfolding, or that my family is unsettled about my return (but "have to take me in" because I'm family...) it is the open arms of remarkable people, scattered all over the place, who have told me it's all right. Come home. For now, it is the right thing to do.