A Long Way From Home

This fall has been very nostalgic for me.  My oldest son has started kindergarten which has turned out to be a sublime trigger to a flood of emotions and memories as we race into fall.  The Pendleton Rodeo centennial was this year (second full week in September) and contrary to what I expected I have had this feeling that we should have been there to be a part of something of a milestone for something that defined, by and large, the town I grew up in.  And this fall, more than ever before, there is the sneaking suspicion that I should be getting ready for deer season, something I haven't done in 10 years, but it is there and very real and with each passing day, each tree that drops its leaves, the feeling is a little more real.

It isn't clear to me if I would have felt this way with the advent of kindergarten or not but that seemed to trigger the fall memories.  One year I jumped out of the top bunk, on the first morning of school, having slept in the cloths I intended to wear.  The halls of my elementary school are vivid in their soft colors, lined with bricks and tall windows.  The gym, the green basement where the cafeteria and kindergarten classes were.  The black top were we played four-square and basketball and the grassy fields for field sports.

Generally my memories of elementary school are a blur.  The faces of my teachers stand out but their names have mostly faded with textbooks and schoolmates and lessons and the individual memories of school.

I was not prepared for these emotions this year.  Fall is usually a nostalgic season for me, however, it defines so much of how we grow up as the starting point for new school years for the formative time in our lives.  I don't think the firsts ever get easier, for the parents or the children.  When my son goes to first grade, the public school down the street, I will be fraught with emotion, once again.  I remember walking onto the campus of Western Washington University for the first day of classes--small, lonely, frightened and a long way from home.

I have a new home now.  A family of my own.  New joys and trials and adventures and challenges in which to participate.  But this fall I feel a long ways away from myself, as though I have drifted to far away from home.