I have been home for almost a month now but it's weird how home changes. My tree in the backyard is the same. It smells like May when I creep barefoot down the driveway to get the mail in the morning but something doesn't feel right. I feel like the world is beginning all the time but also I feel I am mourning something I didn't know was ever gone. Sometimes I'll dream about the sound of night games and hear the click of the Barker's sprinklers and I sprint away from my brother in a heated game of Steal the Flag.Today I looked at my fence and remembered going all Sisterhood of Traveling pants in the backyard with Kristina and Shannon. I still remember the strange looks on Joe and Reed's face hopping the fence to discover our cult or something like that. Even last summer Sunday drives with Brian to the 4th south noodles to get his schedule and just talking about life seems like eons ago.These times of life are dead now. They lie next to everything we give up to grow up. I know I am young still, very young but there is a part of my youth or whatever people call it that is gone now and I must move on. It hurts but I think about my garden this year and how hard it is trying. We have had a very rainy spring and I'm not sure if my garden will make it but yet it still grows. Even when it is drowned, blown over by wind and stepped on by my compassionate cat, it still is photosynthesizing. I have so many more memories to make. It's time to go forward with faith and maybe a little more reality. I just hope someday, maybe even it's in the next life, I can feel home as it was before growing up.
