A Bee in the Flower?

The funny thing about blogging is that even with a sitemeter, I don't really know who is reading this. Today I have things to say that maybe shouldn't be read by certain people who probably never read these anyway. But, I can't be sure.

As I head to the place of my birth for the holiday weekend, I am confronted with the selves (mine) that have lived before me. I am forced to look at the little girl with a gash in her knee as she walks her bicycle home alone. She had been warned to always ride with others. That same girl would grow up to find herself more than a mile from her in-law's home when she badly twisted her ankle during a morning run. Again, a long walk home with the knowledge of what I should have been doing: namely, not running alone.

But, those are endearing mistakes. What of the ones not so simple? What of those choices that, while making me exactly who I am today, were some of the most painful ones of my life? What of the nameless people who supported, even demanded those horrible choices? How do we forgive ourselves for those? And, more haunting, how do I forgive those other people?

Again, I'm thinly veiling these questions to protect, not only those parties that have offended, but to protect myself as I pack up my little hybrid for the long trip to face them. I've been taught how to control the panic that overtakes me in the stores there, how to breathe deeply in the very faces of those I'd like to slap. I will certainly spend an hour practicing yoga before I start the car. But inside me, like that bumble bee lurking in the wildly pink azalea, a stinger waits for skin to penetrate. Part of the panic, after all, is the fear that one day I'll lose control; I'll say all the things that have been bottled there for twenty years.

So while I love to listen to stories of homecomings, and while I have a strange connection to my past and my own pain, I must ask myself a few more serious questions:

• How do I learn to balance the responsibility of family with the yearning for healthy living?
• How can I enjoy the absolute beauty of my hometown when that beauty is covered with the pain of living there?
• What is the importance of place in my life? Or, more honestly, why is so all-encompassing?
• Why am I going there?
• What will I do with the questions when I have a daughter to protect?

I'm off. Safe travels to us all.