The Long Way Home

Spending time over the weekend with my childhood best friend was ah-mazing. As we laughed and talked about the simple life in the sleepy little town of our youth, I walked away longing to go back Home.

Just one more time.

I want to pull into the driveway again and step up the rickety stairs on the side of  "the house" and walk into the Kitchen. I want to sit around the kitchen table with my mother and talk over gallons of coffee...to hear my daddy's commanding laugh over some ridiculous television show. I want to go back to my childhood and replay the years spent straddling the floor furnace to get warm on early school mornings - eight scrawny legs and one weenie dog lined up over the furnace to warm our buns.

I want to wait with legs crossed to use the one tiny bathroom; I want to stand in my bedroom door and watch my mother put on her makeup in the hallway mirror. To slid down the back yard hill when it snows; to sit at the top in the Spring when I wanted to be alone and contemplate life. I want to hang upside down from the front porch rails again, do cartwheels in the front yard, scourer the lawn for four-leaf clovers and lie on the front sidewalk and look at the star. My feet yearn to walk the path again to the rec center to swim in the summers, and to trod the familiar streets to school; to walk the through the rooms of that little house and feel the years, memories and sadness once again.

I want to relive the hugs, the kisses, the groundings, and a couple of the spankings (okay, maybe not so much that). I want to go fishing again with Daddy on Saturday and taste Mama's taco salad after church on Sunday. I want to feel their lips on mine as only a parent kisses their child.

I want to go back to that last Thanksgiving...that last month.

The house that raised me...that raised my children...that loved me.

I want those years back knowing what I know now. I won't take advantage of it - I will breath it in and wrap myself up in everything that house and those years had to offer. I would pay attention to the details and try my damnest to commit every single second to permanent memory.

Just.Once.More.

Back Home.

Peace.