I never expected to miss it.

Home.  It’s always been a bit of an elusive ideal to me.  It’s not necessarily that I’ve moved around a lot, or that I never stay in one place too long.  It has more to do with how I never let myself get too attached to any one place.  Home.  What does that mean anyway?  I’m always waiting for the rug to be pulled out from underneath me, waiting to grab my shoes by the front door and run.  Home.  I’m not settled enough for Home.

If you jumped off our front porch
You’d land right where the Civil War was fought
It’s never been forgotten
It’s twenty miles to the interstate
There’s a Burger King and a Motel 8
And the only thing between here and there is cotton
Jeffrey prays to Jesus askin’ him please,
Just help us through one more day
Jenny gets high, she wastes her life
But me, I just ran away
From a small town
From a small town

Home back then meant a town of 300.  Everybody knew your name and all your business.  You couldn’t so much as think about cutting school before Rachel’s sister’s best friend’s mom, who your mom worked with, knew about it and grounded you.  You couldn’t kiss a boy without the principal and all of your teachers giving you the evil eye.  You were always one mistake away from “ruining your life.”

Home was also full of beauty.  The Potomac River flowed into the Chesapeake Bay, and the water was so stunningly beautiful that I felt lucky to live there.  I spent summers helping my dad empty his crab pots.  We took our lab on the boat with us, and she’d bark at the crabs trying to escape back into the Bay.  I learned how to eat crabs “the right way”, how to roll up my jeans and wade in the water.  I’d spend days in the sun, afternoons napping, and evenings searching for shark’s teeth at the beach.  I spent nights laying in the grass staring at a sky so beautiful and lit up by stars that I felt life could never get better.  I took long walks in a neighborhood untouched by crime.  My friends and I rode bikes well into the night, past anything resembling a normal bed time.  We played hide and seek in the woods and built forts out of sticks and broad leaves.  We swam and ran and dreamed.  It was an idyllic childhood, if you forget about the family drama back in our home.

But the older I got, the more I grew tired of everyone knowing my business.  Of everyone judging me for the choices and mistakes I made.  I longed to feel anonymous in a big city that could swallow me whole if I wasn’t paying close attention.  I wanted to feel adventure and mystery and something larger than myself in a small town.  I left when I was 18, hardly before I was ready, and I only went back a few times.  The last time was to say goodbye to my father, and consequently, to everything that Home had meant to me.

I don’t regret the choices I’ve made, for they are the ones that have shaped me into the person I am today.  But I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss it – the beauty, the wonder, and yes, the adventure.  Perhaps I’ll always be a small town girl at heart.  Perhaps, even though too much has happened for that place to feel welcoming to me, I’ll always keep a piece of my heart there.  Perhaps that’s not so bad.

Sometimes it was heaven, sometimes hell
Kinda like church, kinda like jail
There’s a water tower, says “Welcome To Nowhere”
Soon as I could I was long gone
My jeans were torn and my hair was long
Now I can’t believe I wanna go back there
To a small town
To a small town

“In A Small Town” – Kenny Chesney

This post inspired by Kat.