milestone

I never wanted to live anywhere but El Dorado Springs, Missouri. I had never lived anywhere else. For seventeen years I had lived in the same house, and I loved it. My friends and I had grown up together, we were family. I was related to half the town. My grandparents lived there. At least my dad’s parents. We did not see my mom’s parents very often. I was convinced that I was a meant to be a country boy. So, what if there were no job prospects outside of working on a farm, in a factory, or at the grocery store. Superfluous details. Good people live in small towns. Decent people live in small towns. My kind of people live in small towns.
When I was a little kid, I would go sit on the hammock in the back yard after it got dark. The humidity wrapped around me like a blanket. The violet sky above was filled with stars, no smog to obstruct the view. The breeze would gently flutter the leaves of the walnut trees above my head. The leaves painted themselves in a multitude of Ozark colors that could inspire Norman Rockwell. The chickens, doves, pigeons, turkeys, and pheasants would already be at roost for the night. Sometimes I would sneak in and scare them, just to hear them squawk. Other times, there would be one of those damned opossums waiting to make me squawk instead. One of our many pets would be close to my side and I swayed in the hammock. Fireflies filled the space between earth and clouds. Don’t try to convince me there were not fairies playing tag with them. Every so often a bat would swoop overhead to obtain its feast. The locus, crickets, frogs, and toads would sing so loud that speaking would be impossible to hear. The sounds surround the senses and block out the noise of the man-made world. The thunder would rumble in the distance, preceded by splintering lightening. The smell of rain was never too far away. All of this defined home. All of this was safety. All of this was where I was right in the world. All of my secrets and fears vanished in the ravages of the overload of stimuli of our yard. The world would pause, lie still. Nothing else would matter. Only the moment. Only this tiny enchanted world around me.
My parents, especially my dad, had always wanted to live in Estes Park, Colorado. He had visited there ever since he was a little kid. It was where mom and dad had spent their honeymoon—in the Big Thompson Canyon, before the flood that would later destroy their hotel and many other landmarks of that region. I never really thought they would go through with it. They might as well have been planning to move to Saturn. Everything was in El Dorado. Why would we every leave? Colorado was fine and dandy for vacation, but Missouri was home. Period.
Evidently, my parents disagreed with this evaluation. During my junior year of high school, my folks decided to move to the long desired Estes Park. I begged. I pleaded. I presented my case of the glory of our small town. It worked. I was allowed one more year in our home. We would all stay until I graduated from high school.
I entered my senior year filled with excitement and terror. I made it. I remember looking up to the seniors when I was a freshman. They were so grown up. So cool. So masculine. So sexy. Now, I was one of them. We were going to rule our little high school kingdom. I also knew the countdown was on. The days quickly fell away and the axe poised to sever all the ties to my roots and home angled ever more downward.
Graduation came and went. Many hugs and tears with my friends. None of us had really wanted this to happen. We had longed to grow up, to be able to live our lives. Really, though, we wanted to stay where we were. Eternal childhood. Eternal security. Eternal fantasy. Intrinsically, we all knew the idealic (albeit imagined) euphoria of our childhood was over. As much as we might pretend that our bonds could stand the test of time and distance, we knew better. Those years were placed in bottles and sealed, becoming the adventures and loves that endear Peter Pan to a heart becoming an adult.
Less than a week after graduation, on my eighteenth birthday, we loaded the final items in our cars. Selah and her family would make the trek with us. Her dad and mine, her sister and my brother in our van. Her mom and my mom in our explorer. Selah and me in my teal ’94 Probe. I had never driven farther than thirty minutes away, now I was to drive over a thousand miles, leaving my home behind. Leaving all my friends. Leaving my church. Leaving the grave of my grandfather. Leaving all my chickens. Leaving all the flower gardens dad and I had planted. Leaving everything that made up the few bits and pieces of me that I was sure of. While I was thankful for Selah’s presence with me, I could feel parts of myself die as we traveled further and further from home. It never really occurred to me to stay in El Dorado by myself. Where my family went, I had to go. There was no option. There was no alternative. It may have been my eighteenth birthday, but I still operated with the mindset of a twelve year old. That day marked the beginning of several months were I would cry everyday and fantasize of how to return to my home.
Looking back, it was the right decision. I have been afforded many opportunities than I ever would have experienced. I have become a die-hard city boy. If I had remained in ElDo I would have been married with children by this point. I would be working in some mundane job. I would have still been living in fear that someone would find out my secret. I would still be living with the fires of hell constantly at my heals.
I have returned to my hometown many times since. It was several years before I could leave it without weeping. My childhood home was purchased by a different family. It has fallen into disrepair. I have visited the graves of my grandfather, and now grandmother. I have returned to the annual carnival the town hosts every July. I have seen and spoken to many of my old friends. Whoever I was then has died, or at least entered his chrysalis and emerged a different creature. I would never be able to live there again. In all honesty, I probably would not even be welcome there again. The secrets that darkened my childhood have made me an abomination to many, now that I have brought them into the light and embraced them. I would not return to the suppression of childhood for any reason. I enjoy my aging process and the wisdom that comes with it. Every year gets better. Every year I experience deeper pain. Every year I am able to love more. Every year I become more of whom I am meant to be.
Even so, that period of transition marks the beginning of when I first began to understand that life is pain and there are not ways to change that. It was a birthday gift I never asked for, and one that caused my childhood to flee to Never-Neverland, never to return—whether it be for my demise or flourishment.