on going home

Blog Post 43.

I’ve probably already written a blog post to this effect, but I went home (like, home home) last weekend so I’m going to write about it again.

Unbeknownst to me, the book on tape I selected for the drive down from Denver was rather appropriate for the occasion. It was Joan Didion’s collection of essays called Slouching Towards Bethlehem and it contained pieces entitled things like “On Going Home” and “Notes from a Native Daughter” among varied others.

Going home is something only those of us who have left home get to feel on a regular basis. To me it means many things: to return to a place that is so fundamental to who I am; an indispensable truth; a land that roots me to my understanding of the human experience; a place to which I no longer belong.

It was a quiet weekend. I spent time with my mother- she is recovering from a back injury. I played with the family dogs and kissed the horses’s snouts. I touched the Cottonwood tree under which my siblings and I did so much growing up. I talked to my parents about the anticipatory feeling (one might call it anxiety) I have about the future. Nani sent me away with two containers of homemade red chile. I saw several of the people who I cherish most in the world and, of course, ate lots of good food.  

I have allowed myself to feel special for being from New Mexico: like I know the Earth more intimately than do my peers; like I’ve connected with the tumultuous history of my people and those with whom they interacted more profoundly than people from, say, the Midwest; like I always have something to be nostalgic about because they just don’t do chile here like we do it in New Mexico whenever I am anywhere else that has the audacity to attempt to serve something with the word “Hatch” in its title. I like that being from New Mexico now makes me feel special. It took leaving it to feel this way. When I was a child I felt it was maybe a hindrance, or that I would have to make up for this deficit in my rearing. But there are nuances of my personality and perspectives singular to a girl from the Land of Enchantment- I won’t even attempt to explain these- that have, since I left, made themselves known to me: regalitos of my past and that of my people.

Leaving the North Valley of Albuquerque feels natural to me by now. I drive north on Interstate 25, which connects my two homes. I listen to more books or music. My dad calls me at least three times.  

Between Santa Fe and Las Vegas, New Mexico this time of year there are cars parked every ten meters or so for several miles- the right miles- the owners of which have gone out in search of piñon nuts for generations-old autumnal recipes. I am not one of them, though I know them. I know what it means to feel that dry dirt on a fall day- a day that leaves you hot in the sun and cold in the shade of the pine trees. A day that feels like family and posole and dusty air and turning off the swamp cooler. That is the fall that raised me. That fall is no longer mine to call home.

Six and a half determined hours later and I arrive home. To Denver. To my best friend who already has a Snarf’s sandwich (gluten free turkey provolone with everything but mustard) waiting for me. I put Nani’s chile away in the fridge and sit down to the taste and feeling of being home again.