Shift in Perspective

The weekend in Massachusetts visiting my Dad was a rather introspective one. With my sister there to relate the strange layers of complexities recently developing in the land of our upbringing, with family of every variety in the mix, it brought to the surface a lot of the thoughts that have been swirling around under the surface with me. Things that didn't even relate to being there at all, but just what's going on with me.

Being comfortable with calling Massachusetts home when people ask that ever elusive question to me of "where am I from?" has only just resurfaced this past year. In fact, only since the visit earlier in the year with Todd back in May. It wasn't a shame or anything like that which prevented me from feeling comfortable calling Western Mass my home town, it just seemed inaccurate. Longmeadow life, and my life from 18 and earlier, has been dead to me for a long, long time. Probably ever since I returned from Hawaii in April of '95 to a grey town, literally smelling of sewage, and scattered friends, half of whom I'd felt had betrayed me, the other half had run off as I had. My stay there was only for a summer, and that was only because I felt I had nowhere else to go. It was the last time I was to feel trapped by lack of options.

It was during this time I met Stacey. In fact, I met her the first week I was back and was a horrible boyfriend to her the two months we dated. Gus was my companion as usual for the summer, and when I left for New York that fall I had no intention of ever returning, and only hoped Gus would eventually make his way to NYC to keep up our daily friendship, but that never happened.

Years passed and I went through many lives in that time. While in high school going through my suicidal teen phase at 14, as I think most go through, I came to the conclusion I didn't like the idea of suicide at all. It seemed very final, perhaps I was afraid of the commitment. Instead I decided that if life got to that point where an end seemed the only solution I would simply pick up and leave rather than off myself. I did this going to Hawaii and after New York I did it again moving suddenly and inexplicably to Denver. This is what I mean by saying that I'd lived many lives between 18 and now.

Being home in Mass, now, particularly with my sister, all the business going on with my Dad's health and living conditions, and the reacquaintance I've been growing with my aunt and cousins both in Mass and on a whole it was a very tangible reconnection to a past life deeply buried in my subconscious. Wendie has been going through very much of a similar process as well, and having her to reflect with while both being in the home we'd long rejected and forgotten about was refreshing.

We took a trip up to Amherst and Northampton for Saturday. Driving up through the old New England winding stony roads it no longer looked like plowing through a ghost town, and grunting through a return to appease Dad. As we drove up the landscape, and hung out in the area for the day, it oddly felt like going to a place you'd never been to before, but felt comfortable in as if you'd lived there before.

My Mom and sister talk about when they go to the west country in England and how they feel very "at home" there. The three of us are all firm believers in reincarnation and they have strong feelings that they must have lived very impressionable lives there for it to resonate so strongly. It was this feeling I was getting from a land that I had in fact lived in no more than 15 years ago. It was interesting to me that it was a mystical feeling of home rather than a concrete recognition of home. That sort of feeling that boils out of your flesh as if its tied to the land rather than simply knowing this place or that place. Tourist spots to revisit from your youth and say "huh, I remember that".

I'm not sure if I'm making sense, but anyway, that was the jist of the mindset I fell into upon returning home, and Wendie seemed very much to be feeling the same.

There were also still tensions among the family between Dad and Barb and the reactions being given to the great mustering by the family for his 63rd. Dad was sweet, he was more emphatic than I'd seen him about coming up to get me with Wendie in Albany, as well as spending time with us on Sunday, when the party for him was. Because of that there was a undertoned bitterness brought to that Halloween evening when there was to be a dinner at my cousin Tim's house with the family and Dad and Barb opted not to show. None of us could understand it, but in my mind I've resolved just to let these things go and enjoy the family that did come.

I got to see my Uncle Bruce and his wife Cheryl who I rarely get to see. I was also able to meet my cousin's new daughter, Mina, and roam around the neighborhood for his son, Deniz's, first trick or treating venture. It was still Big Family feel, but I was wishing Dad could have been there, and more so that he could have made the effort to get there. He is relatively immobile, though, in regards to driving distances, and completely reliant on being taken there. For this, the gap in his presence there fell to Barb in my mind, whether fairly or not.

Sunday, however, was a nice display of family which was bitter sweet for me. My Dad's favorite cousin, my Uncle Don and Aunt Mary Ellen, came down from New Hampshire since "the kids" had flown in declaring this odd numbered birthday a big event. My Dad's sister, MJ, her husband Frank, my cousin Tim, his wife Burcu, and their kids also came to my cousin Amy and Corrin's house where Wendie and I were staying to really make it a grand celebration. We'd all chipped in to get my Dad a laptop since he's recently taken to writing up stories of his life.

The gathering was bitter sweet because it stung of nostalgia to me of a long dead tradition of big family gathering together and this seemed like an isolated tribute to those days 20 to 25 years ago. It was a wonderful day, and knowing it would end not to be repeated anytime soon was the lingering thought in the back of my mind. I think Wendie was of the same mindset.

Over that weekend, she and I entertained ideas together of either one of us, or both, returning to live there some time in the near future. This has been the main shift in perspective lately. For the first time in a long time I'm contemplating returning to the place I had long sworn off as dead, and regarded as a life failure if I ever returned. For the first decade of being gone, my visits back had rarely been longer than 24 hours if that's any indicator of how little I regarded the place.

Things now seem to be in the air that have rerouted my compass from south to north, much to my very great surprise. I don't see myself settling in there, but I do see myself possibly setting up there as I have in Denver. While in Boston in the beginning of that week I reconnected with my old best friend, Josh, whom I hadn't seen in about 20 years. He and I were inseparable from about preschool up until I was about 12 or 13, and this reconnection was intensely casual.

I couldn't get over how much of every detail of our childhood together that, not only he could remember vividly, but that I couldn't recall at all. I've always regarded myself as having a very good memory extending back well into my youth, but as he quizzed me I realized how little I knew.

Along with him, my friends Bill and Laura have moved up to Boston from DC, and although they aren't all keen on it now, its interesting to me to see they are part of this new draw home. Stacey also is a major reconnection. When I left Boston she picked me up for a ridiculous day and a half roadtrip from Boston to my Mom's house in New Jersey. I have completely fallen in love with her spirit for adventure and outlook on life.

While on this wandering, twisty road adventure we talked over all of our thoughts and events concerning our lives these days which obviously included these new thoughts on returning home on my end. She was very kind to offer her place up as a place of refuge in exchange for me building her a shed. I'm not sure she knows my complete unfamiliarity with carpentry, but I think I could pull it off.

The road trip, however, was immensely fun including an hour long visit to Ikea for an impromptu photoshoot, a visit to the Gillette Castle in Hadlyme, CT, and several stops along the coast. We were also very strict to her brand of roadtripping, which means staying clear of any and all interstates, hence taking a day and a half for an otherwise five our drive.

During this week I spent a lot of time revisiting my old writings, as I often do when I'm under shift in perspective. Normally these revisits are somewhat depressing as I can literally read the depressing cycle of my life; go off and travel, get bored of that, return home and try to root in, get bored of that, repeat. What was inspiring about this looking back was that I didn't see that this time.

Instead, this time I saw progress. Granted it was unrecognized progress forward at the time, dating back to '06, but seeing it now with three years hindsight it became quite visible. I've decided I think I'd like to share those writings on here, so in the next few days I'll update them.

As for right now, once I got into New York with Stacey we had a grand visit with my Mom, then a really great night meeting Stacey's friend Craig. I flew out the next day to Iceland, had a day there, and now have been in London for the past few days whiling away my time on the computer with evening jaunts out to the pub with my friend Jane, and her friends. Life is good, and the best part of it being good is that I'm now looking at December which two weeks ago I had seen as "all laid out to me" and am now completely baffled as to what to expect.

We shall see.