The Passage of Time

I.

Home was my mother’s womb

*

II.

The warped faded blue wood of the front porch

leant away from my mother’s double wide trailer,

and the bush by the utility pole

located in the middle of the property was gone.

I parked in the same place I used to park my mother’s green Chevy Aveo,

in between the trees where one was split by lightning.

It was just like old times.

In the distance, where my uncle's trailer once stood

before being engulfed in flames years ago,

I saw that the hardware store had expanded their wares

further onto the property.

When we stepped out of the car,

my grandmother opened the screen door of her house

across from my mother’s,

and she walked out with a wide smile.

-

But even she was different

-

She was smaller and frailer

and the flesh of her arms jiggled more with lost weight–

perhaps from the surgery she had gotten a year before,

where a benign tumor was found in her uterus.

But grandma was still the same with laughter and smiles.

Her spirit, high as the heavens, blanketed us in love.

It felt strange hugging her.

I had heard her voice through a phone receiver throughout the years,

but it had been two years since I had last seen her.

Her hair carried more gray strands and age spots against her tawny skin.

She was missing more teeth than the last time I saw her,

and nostalgia hit with the realization of the passage of time.

Sadness bloomed and welled in my bosom.

The tears didn’t come until my mother stepped out of the double wide.

And I wept as we embraced in a hug.

-

This was what home felt like.

-

Warm sunshine on golden brown skin

and vivid blue peeked in between garnet leaves high above in the trees.

I took a picture of my husband and I together.

The last time we had been there had been two years ago

when I had departed with him for a road trip in the night,

to what would become our new home.

The visit to home was too short.

I packed a few things from my old room that no longer felt like mine

and looked around at the house I had lived in for over twenty years.

Brown carpet, aged wallpaper and popcorn ceilings;

twenty years had quickly been overtaken

by the almost three years I had left behind

the warm and sunny South for the long-wintered Midwest.

-

Home was no longer home

III.

Over fourteen hours away from Seven Lakes

is a city located below Lake Winnebago,

which is a five minute drive from

a small white cape cod positioned in between large houses.

Living in the city is what feels like privilege

than compared to the country roads of North Carolina,

Stained with the memories of back roads lined with miles of tobacco plants

And the nights staring up at the ever-changing inky light littered skies,

where it took twenty minutes to get to anywhere.

Home for a year was a newly built apartment complex

where construction never seemed to cease.

Where after some time a small Shiba Inu greeted me at the front door,

which eventually transformed into the setting of the cape cod.

His red coat glimmered in the sunlight as he danced happily

hopping around on his small white feet,

And a warmness spread through my heart at the sight,

Like when my husband arrives home after a day of work.

This was how it felt to let all the day's worries

flow away at once and relax.

This was how it felt to be

Home

*

VI.

Home for my son is now my womb where he grows little by little everyday.

And upon the passage of weeks it will be our little cape cod.

But home after some time will always change.

Memories will always linger until they too fade away.

Though are forever embedded in the capture of time.

*All photos are by the author.