Heart and Soul

When I left home I never thought my choice to return to it would be limited.

It was mine for the having: and no one would take that from us.

I close my eyes and think of home. Especially after eating something old and familiar—like watermelons and corn on the cob. Swedish Pancakes and dad’s Sabbath Morning Breakfast.

I hear my dad’s familiar foot steps… and I see a white cat.

Reality speaks a truth of my father’s absent foot steps and no- we don’t have any more white cats. None.

I see myself tromping around the forest and collecting beavers. This fairy tail lifestyle. The luckiest kid alive. Find another and I will prove you incorrect.

It was mine for the having. As much as my 17 year old hear loved the landscape of Europe and North Africa. I thought that my ordinarily simple- extravagant life would always wait for me.

It doesn’t. Something about being there ruins it all. Capturing its essence I attempt to touch the brittle remains of this old life and it all falls apart. I realize I can’t have it. Controlled resisitence to wreck my memories—should I stay away.

In the cozy confusion of Christmas I found that they truly love each other and don’t know how to mend the train wreck they’ve piled into. He's too proud to apologize and she'sto unrelenting just to let go and expect less. Being their unfortunate blend, I love everyone, expect and want their best and feel hurt when they let themselves down.

I feel bewildered I want to find my way home. The home that my photographs and expectations hold. Ordinary life before the war. No, not Iraq—but we could go back that far for the hell of it. But the war of holding on to not letting go.

If you aren’t living you have nothing. But what is life? Circles of confused existence spinning off my expectations of crafts with my grandmother—and a love that lasts? I can not let go of that hope or I will lose my life.

Until the past few weeks, home had been ever changing yet constant as the Almighty. It presented itself to me in familiar photographs of John Deer tractors and crooked smiles. It was an impersonal familiarity though. One that would not get close enough to be mine. These glimpses of how life should be belong to the past.

I feel as though I lose. I lose something very special to me with this admittance. Mourning the loss of my dear one without his death—spirited death.

It was never my choice. You can not just leave and come back six to nine years later to find things just as you left them. People get old, tired, cranky.

New Olympians have replaced Tonya Harding… and no one gives a shit about Nancy’s blasted knee.

To you, this is just my little place where I write and may put up a picture of you—where I come across increasingly remorseful for unknown sins. But to me… it is really life. Disappointment. And for some reason a still small glimmer of hope that will only lead to disappoint me.

At the end of the day, I guess home is where the heart is. No matter how diseased it may become.

Heart disease is the number one killer of American Citizens Every Year.

Love,
Ash



Oscar died. It's kind of the last straw. It's like nothing is left the same. I suppose that is why I am working on fixing the barn. Because not everything can fall to shambles.

Do you remember Norman, my big fat goat? He was brown and tan and loved people. He thought he was a horse. We thought he might be pregnant.

Norman was the sweetest thing ever. He had these ears that were so expressive. He would stand on his feet “(kind of like Animal Farm) and lick me on the face. If he saw me walking towards the gate he would run so fast. He would let me put a harness on him and connect him to my little red wagon, and then he would let me connect him to a sled in the winter. He's gone too. But, he's been gone for about 15 years.

I suppose that is life. A rebuilding, dying, and rebirth and so on. But I don't like it.

My mom is crying about Oscar in my kitchen. I hate it. I hate it I hate it.

My mom used to say to me when I'd cry last year-- "The best is yet to come."

Is it?