"A Sort of Homecoming"

This is my latest entry from the journal that Aunt Jayne gave me before I left. I'm posting it because it has to do with the first part of my first return trip to Williamsville this past Saturday. I will post the rest either Monday or Tuesday, whenever I write it. I know this entry sucks and ends really sadly, but things got a lot better really quickly, and I'll be reflecting that in my next post. I'll also be contemplating what this entry means to me and what went wrong. Peace.



Yesterday marked my first visit back home since I left for Houghton a little over a month ago. That morning, our FYI groups went to Buffalo to pick up trash under the highway. We drove through the city, passing Dunn Tire Park and HSBC Arena. It felt good to be back in the city. As a kid and teenage, Buffalo wasn't "home". It was close, yes, but it was always somewhere we went to. We would go to a Sabres game, and then we would come home to Williamsville. But yesterday, Buffalo truly felt like home for the first time in my life, and I know it'll always feel like that. I was born in the city, after all.

Anyways, we stopped at an American Legion post, which instantly brough memories of Sugar and Jazz flooding into my mind. At the post, we had doughnuts and orange juice from Wegmans. The doughnuts tasted great, just like they used to, and the orange juice reminded me of when I was in Dairy. When we were done with the trash-collecting, Dad picked me up and brought me home for a bit before all 4 of us would return to Houghton. Mom was waiting outside for me. It was so good to see the two of them and Megan. It was the longest I've gone without seeing any of them, and I missed them more than I thought I would. By all accounts, the visit should've been perfect. Me, the change-resisting, nostalgic kid-at-heart, finally returns to the place where he grew up after a month-long absense. And in many ways, it was good. But it was not nearly as relaxing or peacful or nostalgic as I had dreamed about.

Shortly after I arrived, Dad went out to cut the grass and Megan and Mom left to go get food, leaving me alone to wander through the house that used to be mine. I felt like a stranger, a foreigner. An intruder. My bedroom was just as I had left it, but not as I had lived in it. For one thing, all the windows were open, filling my empty room with the sun and making it feel bigger than it should be. For another thing, it was spotless. No homework from South cluttering my desk. No clothes from the previous day littering the floor. Nothing. It felt like a museum. I lay down on my bed, expecting it to feel like it always did, as if only one day had passed since I'd slept in it. But it felt firm and unyielding...and too high!

Troubled and confused, I used the upstairs bathroom. But the lighting was wrong, all wrong! It felt harsh and grey, and the corner of the shower wall and woodwork on the walls seemed sharp and bright. It looked like a room in one of those 18th century houses that you can walk through as long as you don't touch anything. Don't ask how I got that, I just know. Next I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. The food and drinks within were not there when I had left. I was surprised to see half of a jug of apple cider. I was also surprised to be surprised by that. Normally, I would be the one to start a jug of cider, and I would open the fridge knowing that it was there, knowing how much was left, and I'd drink some. But I was uncomfortably surprised by it being there. I had a glass, of course, but even that felt weird, like I should've asked my parents if I could have their cider. I felt like I was stealing. Then I noticed the calendar hanging on the fridge. When I was in high school, we'd draw a horizontal line through each day. Megan's events and activities would be written in pink marker on the upper half, and mine would go on the bottom half in blue. But for September, there was no blue, only pink! There wasn't even a line; Megan just had the whole day to herself! It was as if I had died and been erased.

I wandered around the house some more. I went in the den and was surprised to see the VCR sitting in the middle of the room, hooked up to the TV. I knew that it didn't need to be there, that the TV's built-in VCR worked fine, so I was infuriated at the sight of the VCR sitting there, because it never went there, never even needed to go there, and putting it there was just unnecessary change and confusion that I couldn't handle. I went into the family room and was scared of the silence. Mom always had the TV on, even if she wasn't watching anything. I turned on the TV, but that didn't help, because I was the one to turn it on, not Mom, so I turned it back on. I was relieved to see a pile of papers on the ottomon. At least Mom didn't become organized in my absense. But then I noticed an old, yellowed photo from a newspaper. It was of Don Trautman, Don Noell, and Donna Noell, from like the 1980's. It made me miss Mr. Noell and Mr. Trautman, the latter of which died while I was at Houghton. I didn't even get to go to the funeral or say goodbye or tell him how much I loved seeing his Looney Tunes ties every Sunday. Nothing.

By now, I felt sad and strange and jittery. I had to get out of the house. So I grabbed my iPod and walked out. I had been looking forward to coming home since I had left in August, and now that I was back, I wanted to leave again! I needed something familiar, something safe, and I hoped to find it by walking around the block. I walked down my old paper route, trying to remember my former customers' house numbers. Luckily, I got most of them right. I came to the crabapple tree at the corner of Arend and Edward. Usually, this tree's rotting apples meant that it was fall. I always associated the stench of this tree's dying fruit with the onset of fall, and school, and leaves changing, and all that. It was always one of my strongest olfactory memories. But yesterday, standing among fallen, decaying apples, I smelled nothing. They were rotten alright, it was plain to see, and I wasn't sick or stuffed up, but I couldn't smell them. I even picked up some particularly soft brown ones and held them right under my nose. Nothing.

Panic set in. This wasn't right. I was home, but only in the most techincal sense. Everything had changed in my absense of only a month. And the worst part? Not all of the change occured at home. Remember, my room remained the same way as when I had left it. No furniture in the house was rearranged; the crabapple tree was still there. No, things had changed in me, in me, in how I looked at things that should've felt familiar and safe. Could this be what "moving on" is? Was I so comfortable at Houghton that Williamsville no longer felt like home? If this truly is what "accepting change" is, then I don't like it, and I will continue to fight it tooth and nail, just like I did before I came to Houghton. I lost something yesterday, and I don't even know what it is. But it's gone. I didn't return to my home that day; I only returned to my house. And I've only been at Houghton for one month, so that can't possibly be home either. But if neither of those places is home, what is? Do I even have a home anymore? So many questions. I wish I had never returned to Williamsville. I want to go home. DS