Starting Again

August 14, 2023

It’s only mid-August. The days are still hot and long. Yet there’s an aura of anticipation in the air. Fall is around the corner. Back-to-school is the current mode for our three teaching daughters and all the grandchildren.

I find myself breathing in this Fall sentiment of starting again. Back to school? No. But bodies carry memories, and mine is reminding me of all the stored familiar feelings related to returning, to getting back in the swing, to starting again in the Fall season, to… to what?

The sensation manifests in me as a strong creative urge, a readiness to pull my memoir project from where it’s been simmering patiently on the back burner forward to the front burner and to turn up the flame.

“Go ahead,” I tell myself, “Remove the lid and take a whiff.” 

Mmm… Smells delicious. The scenes I added last spring have spread their flavors through the chapters, warming the soup and adding some zest.

Now, with the late summer air hinting of fall, I am ready to stir the pot, taste the broth, and start again, fixing sections that aren’t robust. Adding scenes I’ve left out that are asking to be included. Then, stir again, carefully with a wooden spoon, so I don’t scratch the pot, that loyal container of the story, where my episodes have been caramelizing.

What’s missing? How about the morning Mom brought me to my first day of preschool? I was three years old, in tears, sitting on a tiny chair and staring at the door where Mom had departed. I was unaware that my mother sat in her car, also crying. Then, my wish came true. Mom reappeared in that doorway and swooped me up into her arms. Preschool wasn’t for everyone, Mom and I agreed, as we excused ourselves to head home.

There was the summer before my senior year when my Aunt Weasie, a bicycling enthusiast, took me along with her on a five-day, 300-mile ride across the state of Wisconsin via the Wisconsin Bikeway. On that trip, I discovered the possibility of an independent life awaiting me in the world, untethered from my mother.

The crucial missing ingredient has been the story’s necessary but elusive ending. While I am certain of the memoir title, “Why Is Home So Long Ago?” I did not understand the significance of those words.

Meaning came during an unexpected experience in early June while I was in my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, for my fiftieth high school reunion. On Saturday morning of that weekend, Jane and Mary, two friends I’d grown up with in our oak tree canopied neighborhood, joined me for a walk around the Polo Drive circle. As we stood in front of my childhood house, a car pulled up. A teenage boy jumped out and headed up the front walk.

 “Is this your house?” I asked as he breezed by us.

“Yes.” He answered.

“Oh,” I said. “I grew up in that house.” The boy nodded politely and went inside.

We three neighborhood girlfriends smiled at each other, lingering a moment under the leafy Linden tree by the sidewalk. Then, the boy reappeared at the front door.

“My dad said you can come in if you want to.”

In we went, welcomed by Todd, the dad, and his two teenage sons. And the house itself embraced me. I’ve always loved that old white clapboard. In fact, the house is a main character in my memoir, part of the family. It was difficult saying farewell to the house after Mom died twelve years ago.

It’s as though the house orchestrated the recent June meeting. As though it wanted me to know that the connection is not lost but very much alive. With its spacious rooms, kitchen, library, porch, bedrooms, and even the dark basement, the house wanted me to meet its new family. They, too, love the house and are taking good care of it. There was an immediate kinship as we stood together and meandered through the sunlit rooms.

I returned to my San Diego family, still in a dreamy state. Laura listened as I described the auspicious meeting. After a minute, she said, “See if they want to house swap sometime.”

Wow! I imagine our family staying in the Polo Drive house while Todd and his sons vacation in Oceanside and Encinitas. They ride the Bennett family’s bikes to the beach with boogie boards under their arms.

I feel like I have found the end of the book and simultaneously as though I’m being shown the first chapter of a bright future.  

So, here I am, inspired to start again. The story is back from summer vacation, and the soup’s on.