Home is ... ?

Ranger Man is wonderful, and being able to see him again has been, of course, lovely. And he bought me some beautiful yarn, but what will forever mark Spring Break of '08 in my mind isn't any of that. Although I'm hoping, that with the bad stuff over, now we can get onto making good memories.

What images are seared in my brain?

It's more the lack- what was missing. It was the fact that my mom's favorite paring knife was nowhere to be found in the kitchen. The fact that my mom came to take my brother and Ranger Man and I to lunch and she waited outside in the driveway. That she had to ask me and bro how Dad was doing (neither of us played the game, we said we didn't know). It was going to lunch and leaving Dad behind, and eating a sit down meal at the table with no one in their correct seats. I sat where Dad usually sits, Bro sat where I usually do, Dad where Bro should and Ranger Man in the seat that should have been Mom's.

It was pretending that everything was okay when it wasn't, not at all. It was seeing my Grandmother and my pseudo-Grandmother who is even older than the biological one and has just moved into a 'home' and having to keep it all a secret from her. It was the knowledge that Grandma and I are the only ones that seem to be upset by all of this and my mom talking about 'her and my dad' in the present tense but knowing that there is no 'her and my dad' now.

I could go back there next weekend. Ranger Man is at work, and so we're a couple hours away from my family home. I could go back next weekend before my plane leaves, but I just don't know if I can stand the emptiness. I know it's mostly me that's constructing the empty. But does that make it less real? Does the fact that only I feel it make it less of a reality for me? We'll see what the rest of the week brings. This is the problem that I've felt troughout this experience, that I don't have a home anymore. The place that is supposed to always be there and always be a safe haven for me no longer exists.

So now, I guess the task is to start making a new home, in Georgia.