I’ve become obsessed with this idea of home.
It’s the roads here that I know where they go. Take this left and get to the corkscrew. From this point, there are six ways to get to my house. I’ve stopped at this light every day I’ve ever been in this town. Deer can be found here and there. Those people always have a lovely garden. I wanted to try and buy that house when I was driving around with him. Those are the sounds of hootowls and bats. This is how my barefeet sound when I walk around my neighborhood, just me and the night. When I was a kid, I loved the stone bunnies outside that house and Mrs. Strong would say the littlest was me. That path connects to Granville. A friend from second grade lived in that house.
It comes in the shadows and the trees at night when I take a right out of my driveway, as I’ve done hundreds of times. It helps me feel alive. I remember running down the hill into that shade of dark, staring back up the hill to my friends that were leisurely walking. I felt playful and powerful, no one would catch me.
I remember dancing under streetlights. Dozens of nights drawing with chalk at the top of the hill.
I remember sneaking out to that light to be picked up and driven away to things I have no interest for now, I remember spinning under it, I remember kissing under it, desperate phone calls under it, crying under it.
Home was with him.
I still have it with Mira.
Home is Bat Cave, where yesterday I threw my hands up in the air with the comfort of finally being where I belonged, laughter falling out of me in consuming waves. My heart could breathe. I would have just yelled and yelled if there hadn’t been the other people, fun as they were. Almost every missing piece of me came together with each taste the drive gave. That store, that curve in the road, where it merges from the left, the smokestacks and their white clouds, the river, the exit, the ingles, getting into apple country, the jewish camp on the right, the gas station where we stopped that very first time, not knowing right where the Eastern Continental Divide is until we’re on it and then licking a finger and sticking it out the window as we pass. Bat Cave Baptist Church, all however many of them there are. The house that looks like a boat. Three separate bridges. Every little thing building in me…. the smell that always welcomes us, my best friend beside me, curves a bit too fast, motorcycles everywhere. And then we get to where we take a right….. my breath almost stops until we park. I leave the shoes in the car, grab everything else. We scramble down and then, then I am complete again. It carries on when we leave, driving a different route from the way there, different triggers. Moonshine junction, the post office, Gerton, the shows, the walls of kudzu, the motel, the odd place with the chimney still standing and flowers but otherwise nothing, the white church with the vines out front. Once there was a peacock crossing the road, yesterday we turned around for horses.
It’s a place that gives me a feeling I will never find anywhere else, the whole trip is something that gives life meaning. I’ve traveled a decent amount, and nowhere has ever been as pretty as those moments.
There, that place is the ultimate home. It’s my heart.
