THE WIND IN TREE LEAVES

The wind roars through the trees like waves pounding on a rocky seashore.  I stand in the knee-high grass and bask in the memories of this place and I feel… I am not quite sure how I feel. Moments in time flash through my mind, white-capped and frothy, violent in their coming. I am rocked a little bit, beaten by the merciless pounding of memories in the air. My feet feel rooted as if buried in wet sand. Rooted, much in the same way my family is rooted in these hills.

I had forgotten what the wind sounds like. It sings loudly, dominating in the silence. Birds add voice to the melody, and my breath. That is it. There is nothing else. No engines. No people. Nothing.

I stand still, letting the song wash over me, letting it seep into my flesh… my blood… my bones. It reverberates there, recognized, a bell deep and tolling in the depths of my heart.

Home.

It rings and I feel overwhelmed a bit. Heart-sick and lost and sad and shaken all at once. With sweat and blood my family built this place on top of the world and for a while everything spun around us, the center of the universe. Maybe not everyone’s universe, but certainly mine. This place, so large and small at the same time, was my whole world once.

Now, it is filled with ghosts. Ghosts of time spent in the barn on horseback. Ghosts of diamond-white snow forts and crisp chimney smoke in the winter. Ghosts of summers filled with bonfires and dad’s burnt grilling. S’mores. Long afternoons watching my niece and nephew play… playing cards… building fences… stacking hay.

Ghosts of laughter.

So much laughter. So much love.

The sun cracks through the clouds and there it is all around me, my favorite color, grass when the sun hits it just right and you cannot quite tell if it is green or gold. I smile, and at once the sadness is replaced with something else. Happiness. Hope. A calm acceptance that time moves forward, always forward.

The memories still come but softer now, less violent. I can move again, no longer caged by ghosts of a former life. In the warmer light, I can see that they are not even ghosts at all. Now, the memories smile, old friends, nostalgic, wistfully remembering the beauty of the past. I take a deep breath. Time is precious when visits are marked by minutes instead of days, and every time I come back I want to absorb all of this place.

—-

At some point, childhood blends into something else and that blends into adulthood. You are never quite certain how or when it happened, but all of the sudden you are an adult and life takes over. Time stretches as we pack more and more into less and less.

For me, “home” in the most resounding sense will always be that place on top of the world.