Tomorrow Is An Anniversary

Tomorrow is December 30, 2007.

Two years ago tomorrow (besides being “December 30, 2005”, you clever girls) is the day on which (I believe) my ongoing physical difficulties began.

I noted this because Ronald called me yesterday—having remembered that it was my day to return from Pennsylvania after nearly a month and remembered that I told him about December 30—left me a voicemail while I was on the plane returning here.

I'm not having difficulty with tomorrow. I'm having difficulty with today—and nearly every today since that day—because I'm having difficulties being so far away from my family. Back there, I had difficulty sleeping well. There was just as much (or more) physical pain. It was cold with winter's blatant cruelties. Gays are invisible there.

But it's where I grew up. It's where my family lives—except for me. It was a beautiful time because being with my family—including extended family—more than made up for all the detractions. I got to spend time with several of my childhood friends and, for the first time since we were back there in High School, the time-spent was more about the present than our past. Any trips down Memory Lane were of choice and not of lack of things to talk about. That was beautiful. They were beautiful, those friends of mine, for having carved out existences they obviously enjoyed or accepted with pride and for having silently forgiven any and all of the distances I have kept or created over the past quarter century.

Don't get me wrong. I am Home now. But I have always felt that Home is where you hang your head, so to speak: you choose where Home is.

But I haven't felt this far from Home since Never.