Blind inFlight

I miss my parents this summer. I’ve been out of the state where I grew up for over a decade, and even though I am occasionally homesick, I am feeling it harder this past month. I don’t know why. We usually see each other about twice a year, usually once around June or July, but their visit to Seattle is a bit later this year. Maybe that is why I feel the missing more.

I miss their Sioux City house, the house in which I spent my teenage years. It’s an old house. I wrote a poem last summer that I recently rediscovered, and in it I mention the trees in the sloping yard of that house. And now I am missing those trees again, and the swing where I played out fantasies in my mind of how great I was going to be during the upcoming schoolyear. I miss the prickly bushes that scratched my arms on the way up to the wooden porch in the front. I miss being so bored on a summer afternoon that I thought the day would never end and I would die seeking entertainment and never being fulfilled.

I miss being hot, like Midwest summer hot, and walking into an air-conditioned room. (For anyone keeping score, please note that I do not miss Midwest cold.)

I miss a best friend I used to have. We both had summer birthdays. I never felt I had the amount of time with her I craved. I remember the power I felt being someone’s “one and only” best friend, and how I loved that she was mine. We certainly tested our intimacy. I believe she was the first person I said “I love you” to who was not part of my family. That, in itself, felt potent and rebellious.

Perhaps I am thinking about missing because tomorrow will be my second Seattle anniversary. I moved back on August 1, 2017. I got in around dinner time, and ate a pizza at Arlie’s house and fell asleep not having any idea if I’d done the right thing. Two years on, I think I did. Here is where I want to be, at least for now.

August 1 is also my grandfather’s birthday. My family would travel to Indianola, Iowa, where my grandparents lived and my grandmother still lives, to a hot-air balloon festival every summer in late July. I remember my grandpa’s birthday celebration being a big part of those festivities. Not because it was grandiose, but because there was cake, and he was the oldest person I knew. I deeply miss him, too.

The thing about missing. Sometimes, certainly, it is painful and unhelpful. And other times it feels reverent to spend time missing the people and memories that shape the years we get to be alive. Right now, missing feels like honoring. It’s why I write memoir. It is such a bone-deep privilege to miss.