Homecoming

My yin and I are on our way back to North Carolina, almost a year since we last departed. Unlike the previous two summers, this year’s excursion is merely a vacation, a much-needed, much-delayed respite from the Florida summer. I remember last August, when I strapped a bed frame to the roof of my Jeep and wondering whether or not it would be able to stand the 700+ mile trip back to Florida. Amazingly enough, the only difficulty I had was during the first 3 miles on the Blue Ridge Parkway between my father’s house and Blowing Rock. By the time I reached the Green Hill Inn, an errant piece of duct tape had pulled loose and was flailing like a wounded bird in the cool morning air.

But this is beside the point.

The point is that I had grown attached to our summers in the mountains, and more than once I’ve felt that wishing twinge of nostalgia, the slippery slope of “I remember when…” that oftentimes finds its way to becoming “… it should have always been.”

But this is not the way of the material world.

Everything that has a beginning has an ending, and the pain we wrongly attribute to the ending itself its actually caused by the attempt to hold onto something that has already passed.

Vacations (like this one) are a good opportunity to remember...