Ohio trip

Last time I went back home to Ohio I had two kids.

After Liji was born, we went for Christmas and we went for Passover (or maybe it was Passover, then Christmas...it was a long ago). I guess I sort of expected to carry on that way, but then Leif had such intense medical complications as a baby and toddler and then the doctor said no to most travel during the pregnancy with Laila and then I had cancer and then I was recovering from treatment and pretty soon I hadn't been back home to Ohio in almost eight years, which is as long as I lived there.

But not all years are equal. I think somewhere, in the back of your mind, the place where you came of age and the friends you made there will always stay with you because they get locked into your identity a different way, being there like handprints in concrete that's just been poured.

I didn't come back to Ohio this time to reconnect. I came back to help my parents with the old house after some flooding in the basement. But spending time in that Ohio green and eating Tommy's pizza and most of all sneaking in two long talks with two old friends has left me just aching for the place I grew up.   

"I kinda want to move back," I told Nicole this morning.

"I know," she said, though we've never talked about it before. "I can see it in you."

I don't think I actually will, at least not soon. We've got a life here. And I know that actually living there that pull of memory would wear thinner, this rush of feeling would fade away into the everyday.

But I hope it doesn't take eight more years until the next visit. Because it was good to be back home a few days. So good to be home.