Make that four.
I hate trying to force a blog.
I had a lot on my mind yesterday while driving home. I spent nine days in Indiana around Christmas, the most time I've spent there since I moved. In one of my earlier deletions, I had started it with "I spent nine days at home..." and now I typed "...while driving home [to Tennessee]" without thinking.
There's a scene in Garden State where they discuss what home is that describes everything that was on my mind yesterday, and still is today:
Andrew: You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.
Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew: You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start; it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is: a group of people that miss the same imaginary place.
I lived in my parents home for more than 23 years before I moved to Tennessee. This past week was probably the most normal time back I’ve had since I moved. I’ve made trips home for no reason, trips home for funerals, and trips home for holidays in the past 29 months, but none were as normal, and great, as this last trip home.
Much of it has to do with our family having the best Christmas we’ve had in several years. Four years ago, my Grandpa Moles was beginning to decline and had finally let on how sick he was. Three years ago, he passed away three days before Christmas, making the holiday a very somber occasion. Two years ago, I had to work every day around Christmas and didn’t get to spend much time with family, or truly appreciate that time because I was so tired. Last year, my sister was overseas and my Grandpa Bennett wasn’t doing very well (he died weeks later).
Our family has changed dramatically in the past three years. My parents went from having two sons at home and a daughter away at college to two sons living in Tennessee and a daughter who has decided to permanently stay in her college town. We have gone from three living grandparents to only one. My Aunt’s husband (now ex) decided to leave her suddenly and she is still healing from those wounds.
Some of my fondest memories come from Christmases and Thanksgivings where we had too many people to fit in one room for dinner, when opening presents took the entire morning because we’d watch each person open one gift at a time with 13 or 14 people in the circle, and when we’d watch Christmas Vacation (having to fast-forward through the pool dream sequence until we were old enough) or Dumb & Dumber after dinner.
This Christmas, though, I think we all came together under the same umbrella of missing that imaginary place we used to know and love. We’ve all finally accepted (so some point) the idea that though our close family may be smaller, there is still as much love and joy and caring as there was before.
I will forever hold onto the idea of home and that idea(l) will always live in Terre Haute, Indiana.
I’m going home again this weekend to spend more time with friends during New Years and also to see my beloved Indiana State Sycamores play three games. I’m quickly realizing how precious the days are under my imaginary umbrella.
I wanna watch Garden State.
