Going Home

Unlike last month’s colorful art trip, this particular ride back to the region of my childhood was marked by miles of bare branched, purple-grey trees.

After an 11 hour drive, I arrived at my parent’s house (where I have been storing my art trailer) at 9 p.m. I chatted politely for an hour and a half before I put my head down on the pillow, my brain still vibrating from the road. I was at my parent’s house for all of 12 hours, but managed nevertheless to catch a family crisis of Jerry Springer proportions, which awakened me from a Tylenol PM-induced sleep at 1:30 a.m. I had to leave by 8 a.m., and pulled something in my back manually turning the trailer around 180° in the back yard to hook it up, because my mother’s car was “dead” in the driveway and could not be moved to allow for easy access to the trailer.

I am suddenly a nine year old who doesn’t know what to do, my heart pounding, straining to look over the dashboard, and pulling away from their house with a trailer in tow. I turn onto the highway, heading further North to pick up my work from the latest exhibition. I look up at the pulsing clouds of birds escaping to the South, and wish that I was one of them.