Me 10 years
(and 100 pounds) ago standing in front of the ol' home place...where I grew
up....in Roanoke, Virginia.
By Grant McGee
A co-worker
found himself out of a job a few days ago when he and the company overseers had
a “parting of the ways.”
I felt for
the dude because he had come from a whole ‘nother part of the country to work
on The Gulf Coast.
And the
thing about his and my chosen profession in this region is opportunity is slim
and the wages aren’t like what they pay back in his neck of the woods.
“Dude,” I
texted him, “Why don’t you just go on home?”
Some folks
don’t understand my thinking about “going home.” Home is where they know you. Home is where you can go to regroup and then
go back out into the world. Home is a
safe place. Home is where you perceive
that safe place is. Maybe it’s where the
folks are, maybe it’s “where everybody knows your name.”
This thing
about coming back to the nest isn’t anything new. I grew up thinking that’s what “home” is
for. If all else fails, come on back.
I first got
the idea home was a safe landing place when I got my first job about 150 miles
from where I grew up.
“What if I
don’t make it?” I asked my dad. “What if
I get out there and get fired?”
“Well then,
come on home son,” he said.
As it turned
out nothing bad happened and I started down the merry lane of my career path.
Flash
forward six years.
I had made
some poor life choices and the “coup de grace” was losing my car in a one
vehicle wreck. With no car I lost my job.
With no job I lost my groovy apartment. I figured I could go home until I pulled
things back together.
Boy, was I
wrong.
I called my
folks. My mom answered the phone.
“Hi Mom,” I
was smiling so she could hear it in my voice.
“Can I come home? I’m in a bit of
a mess.”
“Well,” she
said cherrily, “you’ll need to talk to your father.”
She put my
dad on the line.
“Hi Dad,
can I come live with y’all till I get on my feet? You know, just for four or six months?”
“No, son.”
Wow, I was
amazed at how fast he answered me (I think they knew I’d be calling).
I was
dumbfounded. It took a few seconds to
gather my thoughts. I gave a nervous laugh.
“I-I thought that’s what home is
for, Dad. A place to come back to when
it all goes down the tubes.”
I wanted to say “when it all goes
down the shitter” but I knew he wouldn’t appreciate the term. Dad may have said “damn” and “hell” but he
didn’t use other words when it came to cussin’.
“Well, son,
your mother and I believe if you stay out there and pull yourself up by your
own bootstraps you’ll be a lot stronger.
And one day you’ll look back on all this and laugh about it.”
Now that I
look back on it I don’t think I would have let me come back home to live
either. I was a trainwreck survivor and
I acted like one at the time.
But Mom and
Dad did let me come home for the weekend and something most interesting
happened. It was the weekend that my
aunt and uncle came down from Ohio to visit my folks. My uncle handed me a paper from up in
northern Virginia.
“I bought
this to have some reading material on the trip,” he said. “There’s a job in the classifieds there that
sounds like it’s right up your alley.”
I opened
the paper and saw the job.
I knew the
guy listed to contact.
I called
him and was hired over the phone.
I moved to
the new little town, walked or biked to work and got back on my feet.
My dad was right.
What would
I do if one of my kids wanted to come live at my house? I’d say, “bring your stuff.”
I don’t
think that’s going to happen, though.
All of them are well down the merry path of life these days. However, if one of them had a change in
fortune the door would be open.
That’s what
home is for, isn’t it?
-30-
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