I left home. Can’t tell where.
Not Yet.
I was born there. Parents born there, grandparents born there, too. I never left home. Not even for school. I raised my family there, worked hard, had no reason to leave. Planned to die there, really. Until the day I heard the words, “You won’t like this.”
I did not imagine leaving home to feel like Velcro. The slow stubborn riiiiiip. The plastic-nestled peg in nestled peg yanked apart, one by one, to the very end of the plastic strip. I did not imagine leaving home to feel like chin hair. Like excavating roots. Plucking out bulbs, digging after some, drawing blood.
I imagined leaving home to consist of frosty morning awakenings, last room gazes, neighbors with mugs in hand waving. I imagined cubicle hugs and hands pressed to dewy windows. I thought the sun would wink. Yeah. Leaving home’s nothing like that.
As a child, all I wanted was a Jeep. While most kids played with dolls and action figures. I played with Jeeps. Any Jeep. A Moldarama Wagoneer. Matchbox Laredo. GI-Joe Cherokee. At sixteen, I begged for a Jeep. Didn’t get one. Got a Geo Tracker instead.
[resource: Geo Tracker].
My first Jeep did not arrive until a Friday in March of 2020. Easy to remember. I was told on that infamous Friday to pack up my stuff and prepare not to return to my classroom for the rest of the semester. Earlier that day, I happened to ask a student about his Liberty, “Do you ever find yourself missing your Jeep?”
“Uh. No?”
“Really? I do. I’ll be here teaching, but I’m really thinking about my Jeep in the parking lot. I feel a burning knot under my sternum because I miss my Jeep so much. That doesn’t happen to you?”
“No.”
I didn’t foresee packing up my life when I put a red bin of files in the back of a brand new Jeep on that Friday in March of 2020. I didn’t know, down the road, I’d end up stuck in the metaphorical “Geo Tracker” of the United States. I didn’t know the love for that Jeep (and damn I love that Jeep) would be incomparable to what burns inside me now, hundreds of miles away.
Had I known. Had I known.
I still have my blessed silver Jeep, but I’m stuck, here, in [Insert State]. That story’s developing.
There’s my introduction. Read my words. Suspend disbelief. If you experience a nagging sensation, an unknown familiarity, the quickening of the heart: pay attention.
You might recognize me.
