Begin again.

I might have cried, but for the moon and for the thought of you tracing the places we once had been, the person I had promised you I’d be.

~ from Journey: a traveler’s notes by William Sulit and Beth Kephart

On the flight home to Texas, you realize just how long it’s been. Since you’ve flown. Since you’ve seen your father, your sisters, your mother’s sister, those who know you best. Of course, it feels like forever, but it’s only been two years. Still, you are not the same person you were when they saw you last. When you last saw them.

Of course, there’s the pandemic, where you’ve been forced to slow down and take in more of what was right in front of you. But in the last two years, you lost your footing in a few places, got back up bruised, fractured, heart worn and weary. The bruises heal. The fractures dredge up an old pain you thought you had put to rest. Where weariness sets in is during the weeks of stepping gingerly, barely breathing. There was the month of anger. Of course, anger. And to measure it by a month isn’t entirely correct; anger, like grief, comes in waves and is marked by varied lengths of intensity.

This pandemic was nothing.

When the weather warms and the restrictions ease, you open the door, step outside. The yard is beat up, in front and in back, and full of dandelions. You gather your spade buried somewhere deep in the garage and begin carving out each one that has taken root, like you might cut around a festering sore. You pray for forgiveness. Dandelions, after all, have merit. This simple act of attention becomes a meditation so, of course, you stay outside longer than you had planned. You dream about summer, schedule a long visit with family, buy the plane tickets.

You are greeted at the airport by your sister who looks just like your mother, so much so that your heart skips and you whisper, Thank you.

She chauffeurs you for miles to each cornerstone (because there is more than one). It’s strange to feel lost in the place where you grew up. The roads have changed – names and directions, are still changing. But when you take the wheel, you take your time and drive with the windows down.

The rush of the Texas heat, the sound of your cousin’s laughter, the spirit of your kids and the joy as they tap into your roots (why have you kept them away for so long?), the wide-open spaces, your father’s tender heart, the words of your aunt who says, Your mother would be proud.

There it is. Everything you need to begin again.