Two short, but sharp fingers gesture in the night as a big yellow taxi ambles over to the sidewalk ... it's past 3 a.m. and on the street I cut a lone figure, but once I was safely inside the cab, I let the cabbie whisk me away to the big LGA (LaGuardia Airport).
I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the force against nature that is an airplane taking flight. It's like a roller coaster, but thankfully my flight was without any surprise loops or turns. After a swift changeover in Charlotte, I found myself gazing longingly at the beautiful, unmistakable Blue Ridge Mountains gently sloping as far as my eyes could see.
This is what I heard inside my mind:
Home. Where my thought's escaping. Home. Where my music's playing.
I’d kept faces etched in my memory, and had misplaced the feelings of touches, the glints of warm smiles, the sounds of familiar laughter-filled sighs. But in each instance, what was old was new again and wonderfully so. Instantly I saw my mother’s face and I felt three years old all over again – overwhelmed with the relief that being home brings … the comfort … the knowing … the love.
Leaning into her embrace, I got the same carefree and cushy feeling that collapsing into a pile of raked leaves provided me many years ago every autumn. I was instantly suspended in glee and lost in my own world. We grinned at each other like we’d met for the very first time all over again – gleaming eye to gleaming eye. Cheek to cheek was ambled our way out of the airport as she sang to me:
I feel it in my finguhs. I feel it in my to-es. Love is all around me and so the feeling grows …
I told her all about life in the city – the smells, the sights, my everyday routine. She filled me in on work, and we both sighed agreeing that it’s hard having to work for a living. We fell right back into our familiar rhythm, and inside I scoffed at whoever the fool was who said you can’t go home again. Bollocks.
One by one I caught up with old chums and it was good. I felt almost famous. It was a whirlwind of a tour and people came out to see me, lent keys to let me in, clapped and smiled at the sight of me. It was nice. I realized that man, I’d missed these people. I missed the cadence of our conversations, and with each hello hug, I realized just how great and awful it is to miss the people who have made you and allowed you to be what you are …
The weekend whipped by fast and the sunshine was blinding, but it was wonderful to celebrate me home – to the place unlike any other, to the place warmed by my mother, to the “places” I remember that are above any other …