Home For Christmas

I woke up early on Saturday morning, threw a change of clothes and my toothbrush in a bag, and started the trek across the desert to my Mom's. It's a four hour drive across some of the most beautiful desert in the world. Much of the way follows old route 66 through abandoned towns, and valleys of cactus and creosote that fall away as far as the eye can see. I've made this same journey maybe thirty five times over the past seven years. This time would be the last. I'll most likely drive up I-40 again, but I'll never have the same destination in mind. I'll never pull up in the same driveway again, expecting to be greeted by same smiling faces. I'll never again sit on that porch in the evening, talking with my family over dinner while the sun sets behind us.

I arrived around noon and helped them pack the garage. All of the remnants of memories and dreams that made my family who they were and are. The half-empty scuba tanks, the old red flag my Dad had made for paintballing, the hammers and saws that had built many a backyard project and assisted in countless home improvements, the ski-rope that towed my brothers and I behind the boat on our river adventures. So many little odds and ends that spoke of daring summers long past. They tug to the surface memories that would otherwise be forgotten. All of these things covered in dust, undisturbed for the past two years.

I never lived there, but it has still come to feel like home. It even carries those familiar scents which I associate with my childhood. So much has happened over the past seven or so years since my family left California, and today my Mom and my youngest brother left Arizona for good. They've left that house where we spent Christmases and Thanksgivings together, where my father died and my brothers became men.