Going Home

Ted Reads Going Home

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I went home recently.  Back home, my childhood home.  To Ohio.

Not the kind of home with a welcome mat or a key hidden under a rock, but the deeper kind.  The one that lives in muscle memory, in the soles of your feet, in the way your chest tightens before you even know why. I went back to the places, people and land that birthed me, raised me, nurtured me, shaped me, marked me.

I did not go alone. I was accompanied by my sister, whose beautiful presence made the journey feel safer, truer.  Going with her, the trip felt less like trespassing and more like bearing witness to each of our memories of “home”.

It had been many years since I’d been there. A lifetime, really. Long enough for time to smooth the sharper edges and soften some of the stories.  Like decades turn what was once the trenches off warfare into pleasing rolling landscapes. 

Long enough to wonder if what I remembered was real or simply nostalgia doing what nostalgia does; romanticizing what once was because the present is quieter.  And, quite unexpectedly, providing grace for the sharper painful memories.

We walked among my history.  Driving past the half dozen homes I lived in as a child. Some still standing, others altered enough to feel like strangers, all of them gentrified to an amazing degree.

Except for one.  It is now but an empty space.  Now but the ground of a soybean field.  No plaque. No marker. The kind of absence that commanded us both to silence.  The place where joy had been tainted by huge doses of childhood fear, pain, loss, and trauma. 

Energies that no longer exist.  The now empty space speaks louder than the house that once sheltered life ever did.  Much like the homes that are razed when the magnitude of what happened there exceeds comprehension need to be erased.  This one is gone.  It actually caved in shortly after we moved out of it. 

And then there was the farm. We returned to the farm that was the center of my universe.  It’s difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t grown up that way what a farm can mean to a child. It wasn’t just land, work, or responsibility, it was orientation. It told me where I belonged in the morning and where I’d end the day. It taught me that being with my grandfather meant days and days of fixing fence and other quiet chores in total silence.  It taught me that if I wanted company I needed to learn to listen and talk to myself.  Some of the old equipment I worked with and on is still there, wordlessly reminding me of how I spent my days and nights.  It taught me about seasons, endurance, and the quiet dignity of showing up even when no one is watching. The farm didn’t care about my excuses, feelings, or thoughts. It didn’t reward me for intention. It responded only to effort and time. Oh, the farm.  So many memories of so many things and people.

We drove down the old country roads with memories of walking the ditches with a gunny sack.  Collecting long-neck beer bottles.  Contributing to the family fortune at two cents each. Short ones had no value.   I didn’t understand that then and still don’t.  But I understood rules and rules matter when you are hungry.

Memories of walking cornfields with those same sacks, picking up ears the corn picker missed.  Walking the long rows, bent over, collecting the potatoes that had been plowed.  Stooping again and again, filling the bags, learning early that food doesn’t arrive by magic. It arrives by effort.  Then put away in the cellar for the winter.  Those sacks did more than carry bottles and vegetables. They carried responsibility. They carried the unspoken understanding that survival was a shared project.  Even if you were little.  Especially when you were little.  A job for everyone, every day.

Cruising the little town near the farm, where one of my jobs as a little one was to pull my aunt and uncle out of the beer joint. Feeling proud to lead them, hand in hand, to my dad’s idling car, and placing them gently in the back seat, where they would quickly fall over and sleep until we got them to their home safe and sound.  I learned early that such things were not to be mentioned or remembered.  I wondered how much those early tasks silently influenced my current occupation. 

We visited the cemetery where my ancestors are buried. Rows of names. Some familiar, some long forgotten. I saw the place and touched the stone where next to my mom and dad, the baby sister I never knew would be with them eternally; forever young.  People whose choices, wise and unwise, kind and flawed, somehow converged to make my existence possible. Standing there, I was reminded that none of us arrives alone. We are the living continuation of stories that began long before we were born and will continue long after we are beyond anyone’s memory. 

We went to the county fair. Smaller than memory, of course. Isn’t everything? But still carrying the scent of fried food and livestock and ambition. A place where I spent many a night (but not enough) sleeping with the prize chickens that came, not to be eaten, but to be honored for their beauty and specialness.  Still a place where people gather to measure themselves.  Whose crop grew best, whose animal stood tallest, whose pie deserved a ribbon. It was never just about winning. It was about being seen.  Heard.

The schools I attended are still standing. Still functioning as schools. Seventy-five years later. That fact stopped me in my tracks. Same hallways. Same classrooms. Different children, different teachers, but the same quiet commitment to showing up every day to do the slow work of learning. I met with some of my high school classmates. We talked about teachers who mattered. Classes that stayed with us. Marching band memories.  How it felt to be part of something larger than us, moving in time, learning discipline without quite knowing that’s what it was.  I was always on the fringe, not knowing much about life and would confess that it was still true.  It’s not so much that I don’t know lots of stuff, it is just that the limits of what there is to know, is well, limitless.  Like never arriving at the edge of the horizon.  By the way, after nearly 60 years I was surprised that none of them looked as I had remembered them!!!

We visited the site of the church that by force shaped my life for more than a decade. Like putting a young one in braces, until they can walk away on their own, hoping they never do. The building is no longer there. Much like my need for it.  The lessons, the rituals, the memories remain.  Churches, like people, don’t always survive in physical form. But what they give us, the songs, the silence, the questions last a lifetime.

We traveled old country roads that somehow still knew me. I once walked, biked, ran, and later drove on the roads. Roads that carried me away and, improbably, welcomed me back.

We passed the homes where my cousins lived. Places that once held laughter, chaos, alliances, and secrets. And as we drove, I was reminded of the things we did to make sure there was enough to eat, and enough time to play a little. 

The best part of the trip wasn’t the places.

It was being with my sister and cousins, listening to their stories, and realizing, relieved and grateful, that I wasn’t making up what I remembered. Grateful that my memories weren’t exaggerations or hallucinations, or inventions. They remembered it too. I did no prompting, no leading the witnesses.  I simply listened to their “Do you remember the time when…….?” They spoke of the work. The scarcity. The humor. The resilience. The play. The irony. The moments.  Their voices anchored mine. Their recollections confirmed my reality.

There is something profoundly healing about having your story mirrored back to you by those who were there. It steadies the soul. It says: “Yes, that happened. And yes, you survived.  And yes, we thrived.”

Going home didn’t make me wish for the past. It didn’t make me want to live there again. What it gave me was context. Perspective. Renewed respect for the boy I was and the people who walked beside me.  Proud that our clan, to a person, had taken the simplest, humblest of what life had to offer and made a better life for ourselves and our children and our grandchildren. Like turning a corncob or apple into a priceless doll.  A roll of string into a homemade baseball.  

We don’t go home to stay.  We go home to remember where we started, who we were and who we are.