There will be stops along the way, overnight visits with blogging friends and high school classmates, people I've never met and those I haven't seen in 23 years. There's a scary sort of exhilaration at play, a sense of jumping out into the unknown, gingers in tow, and landing someplace that still feels like home.
The bloggy friends I'll meet know me. We are creatures of the writing world, sharing the same deep hopes, the same fervent dreams, expressing ourselves in words and witty bits.
The high school friends I'll see knew me. They knew the painfully awkward and shy girl I was. They knew the teenage facade of indifference. They knew the girl who formed the woman I am.
I plan on taking the kids to my hometown, population 538. I sent out a message on Facebook, that brilliant site that has provided a tether to my past. I should be able to see a few of the people I went to school with, a half dozen at least, I hope.
It's amazing that I've not seen them. We've kind of slacked off on the whole reunion thing. I never heard if there was a ten year and the twenty year wasn't really possible for me to attend. I see them all on social media, follow their families on trips, cheer when their children graduation, smile as they find love, and ache as they lose those they care for.
I was always a bit outside during high school. With the hindsight of an adult two decades past, I think maybe that's just how everyone feels during those years. Six months after I left home, I returned. For the first time, my phone rang and a boy was on the other side inviting me to join those classmates who had wandered home at a party to catch up with how things had been going in the great wide world.
My parents being who they were said no and me being who I was, respected their wishes. After all, I was in their home and the obedience of childhood was still strong.
I wonder, sometimes, what would have happened if I'd have gone to that party. Would I have reconnected as an adult? Would I have exchanged numbers and addresses, perhaps building a stronger relationship with my past? Would those stronger relationships have pulled me back when, two years later, I found myself adrift with no anchor?
When I left home, I left my life. It wasn't intentional, it was just how things were then. We didn't have social media or even the internet to keep up with people. There were no cell phones, no way to keep touch with people who moved or left or changed addresses.
I was talking to my co-worker Val the other day. She grew up here, raised her children here. When we go out to lunch, she sees people she knows - teachers, classmates, family. I told her how amazing that must feel to be so connected. She said she didn't know any different because she never thought to leave and can't look back at a moment and wonder what if.
Maybe that's what I'm doing when I visit home. Maybe I look back and wonder..what if?
It's not that I don't love my life and the people in it or the relationships I've built, but...
Who would I be? Who would I have married? It's not a small what if; it's a life changing fixed point in time. I was faced with a divide in the road and the path I chose sent me so far from where I came that every bit of me has changed because of it.
And it's a long drive back.
We're going to meander with a vague idea of how far each day should take us. I'm excited. I'm nervous. I'm anxious to get started with our grand adventure.
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