Walls

This weekend we traveled back home to St. Louis to see my family and to celebrate my daughter's 1st birthday. It's a peculiar experience, traveling home for the weekend. I haven't lived anywhere near my parents for 15 years now, and though I see them several times a year, our visits are always short, lasting only a few days at a time.
It's odd, having a lifetime of experience and conversation and emotional engagement packaged into 48 hours. There's an underlying swell of fragmentation, as we have to pick and choose what to talk about, or decide on experiences that will be the most memorable, since it's the only opportunity we have to share an experience. I've become saddened by the reality of returning home under these circumstances and in this context, and have missed the days of my youth, where I could co-exist with my family in a meaningful relationship. Granted, I didn't appreciate it when it was my reality, but I find myself smiling fondly about comments my mother makes about how I've always been this way, or about how I was when I was younger. I love that I'm known when I go home and I wish that knowing would last longer than it ever does. The solution would be to move back home and live near my family so that we could see each other with some regularity and not have to cram our relational experience into plane rides to and from the airport or choppy video conferences. But I know that living in St. Louis would be entirely different than it was. Proximity to my family would probably become mundane and unexciting. We would see them every few weeks, in contexts that feel similar to what they are now. We would be rushed by our obligations to soccer practice or church or piano lessons. The comfort and completion of home mostly only exists in my head now. I mourn over my forfeiture of home. That mourning somehow coexists with my satisfaction over where my life is currently. I am content to be a husband and a father and a teacher and all of the things that I am. But there is a subtle groaning to be known and understood by more than just my wife, who does know and understand me as intimately as anyone in my life ever has. I don't know, I long for that feeling and hold up "home" as the answer, as I always have while simultaneously knowing that it's a lie I tell myself that I have to be somewhere specific or with specific people for it to be possible. It speaks of something deeper, though; a deeper darkness that has taken root within me. The walls that I have constructed around myself to keep others out have been effective, and I'm facing their accumulating consequences. The work of tearing those walls down, being vulnerable, taking real interest in the people around me without fear of being exposed for what I'm hiding, is what must come. But, when I'm home, my parents and my sister and brother know what lies beyond those walls. They have seen me before I constructed the walls that now obstruct their view. I can experience the knowing without the work of deconstructing my walls. And, I suppose that's what I really crave--not having to do the labor that lies ahead of me. It's labor that I, if I'm being honest, have no idea how to do anyway. But it must be done, home or not, and thus I must try. I'll let you know how it goes.