Coming Home

He was coming home.

He hadn't thought of this place as home for many years. Home was the house where he had loved his wife and raised his children but as he drove down the long overgrown driveway of his childhood the sense of homecoming was strong.

It was the smell that started it. The fragrance that reminded him of long days laying in the paddocks. The source of the smell was overgrown lantana which lined the driveway. Tangled stalks with tiny red and yellow flowers whose scent had such power over him. It was a smell that would always remind him of those times.

The gravel crunched under his tyres as he pulled up in front of the house.

He sat in his car, not bothering to undo his seatbelt, taking in the ghosts of his past. Over twenty years had passed since he had been here last. The house hadn't changed much in that time, it was old when he had lived here and it was simply older now. The paint was just as flaky, the gardens just as disheveled. The guttering was sagging in places and the tin roof was rusted. The faded lace curtains in the windows were the same ones he remembered as a child.

His memories were bittersweet.

Growing up on the farm had been all that he knew as a child. It was an idyllic lifestyle with early school mornings spent feeding the horses and afternoons spent outside until the last ray of sunlight had left. Times spent climbing trees, swimming in the creek and daring each other to race their horses through the rough country in the back paddocks. So much joy, so much laughter.

The house once had been the centre of those happy memories. Baking cakes with his grandmother, being read stories at bedtime, so many contented moments in a young boys life. Instead it was the one place he had sworn never to step foot in again.

He took a deep breath, unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the car.

The path around to the back of the house was overgrown. He would have to get the estate agent to hire someone to tidy the place up before it went on the market. As he walked around to the barn he kept a careful eye out for snakes in the long grass, they were always around with mice and rats that the barn attracted.

The barn was just as rickety as he remembered it. Old weathered boards and a saggy roof. As much as the house was the centre of his dread in coming back here, the barn was the opposite. The most perfect place in his world. A lifetime of experiences away from this place couldn't compete with the wash of nostalgia he felt when he took in it's perfect imperfection.

There were no gates left on the entrance to inside the barn, one was lying broken and unmended to the side, the other nowhere to be seen. He stepped into the shadows and took it all in.

Moulding hay bales were piled in a corner as dust motes danced in the light from the cracks between the greyed timber boards from which the barn was built. Faint rustling sounds in the second level betrayed the presence of mice and rats.

This had always been his favourite part of the farm. As a child it was a place filled with endless possibilities, ladders to climb and hay to jump in. Rusted tools to be used in a thousand imaginary battles and always his beloved dogs and horses as the characters and soldiers in every adventure. As a teenager it became his escape from reality. Hours spent tucked in between hay bales travelling to different worlds through his precious collection of novels. And of course, time spent with her.

This was the first time he had seen the barn through a man's eyes. A lifetime lay between then and now. Years of study and work. Times of scarcity and times of plenty. Relationships started, ended and finally the years of marriage and children, bills and overtime, love and laughter, tears and worry. As a child this place was viewed through the lens of innocence and wonder. It was hard to remember those unburdened times.

He picked up a rusted iron bit. Once his horse gear had been treated with such reverence. Leathers were oiled and metalwork was always cleaned. It was clear that no-one had cared for his tack in years. He sat on a bale and let the memories come.

As he became a teenager his boyish love for his horses and dogs soon found competition in Tara, the neighbour's daughter. They had grown up together and played together throughout all of their child-hood. Then, suddenly things became different. Almost overnight he noticed that Tara's awkward, skinny frame had become softer and somehow more curvy. He had also started to become conscious of his own body and strange changes happening to him. Where once they had been carefree, suddenly they were shy with each other.

As children they had played all of the games that children play together, with innocent curiousity about each others differences. As they grew older he found himself thinking about Tara in very different ways.

What had once been such an easy relationship between them as children then became self-conscious and awkward. For months they reached an impasse, stuck somewhere between being childhood friends and teenage sweethearts. Their time together became more strained with both wanting to reach out to the other but neither knowing how.

Then, one glorious autumn afternoon a play-fight in the barn took a turn. Tara pushed him and he pushed back and then they were wrestling on the hay bales, a game they'd played many times before. When he finally pinned her and looked down at her tousled blonde hair tangled with stalks of lucerne he took the chance and kissed her.

She tasted of sunlight and strawberries and magic.

Their kiss was the kiss of innocents. They spent that afternoon whispering, laughing, kissing and holding hands until finally the light faded and it was time for Tara to go home.

It was a perfect memory. It was the perfect day.

There was no dramatic ending to their relationship. It was like all teenage love affairs and as quickly as it had started, it ended when Tara fell for another boy from their school. While he remembered vaguely the pain of that loss, he too went on to date other girls in high-school. Years later he had looked Tara up on social media and she seemed as happy in her life now as he was. He loved his wife with the deep commitment of a husband and father, his memories of Tara were fond but fleeting. She was a nostalgic but unsubstantial memory.

Eventually he had moved out to go to university and his life on the farm was over. He saw his parents regularly for years until the day that his mother told him she didn't approve of his wife to be. His parents were people of firmly held beliefs and had strong views on what type of girl he should marry. He had known that they would be uncertain about his fiance but he had never imagined that they would refuse to attend his wedding. On the final morning of his wedding he went back to the farm to beg them to come. When his mother refused and told him that he had to make a choice, he did.

His father passed away a few years later leaving his mother alone on the farm. He wasn't invited to the funeral.

He celebrated the birth of his two children with his wife's family. Other relatives lost touch with him over the years as he refused their pleas to reach out to his mother.

Then last week, the letter arrived from his mothers solicitor. She had passed and left the farm to him.

Now that she was gone, he didn't know how to feel. There were many childhood memories of her warmth and love for him. There was also the pain and loneliness of an adult whose parents had turned away from him.

The farmhouse represented every conflicted emotion he held. He wanted it gone.

He had come all this way just to visit the barn one last time. To try to replace the painful years as an adult with the treasured memories of childhood. What he took away was that one perfect day of innocence, so many years ago.

He had come to say goodbye.