The Long Way Home

These days I take the long way home, meaning that I am there every day. I am there in the house I grew up in. The clutter is the same, the books are still falling off the shelves and my parents exist in the same intellectual Bohemian comfortable debris they always have.

but now my dad no longer cooks. My brother and I make supper. I clean up and wash the dishes. Sometimes I try to clear an area, but more often my mother simply needs me to hold her on the couch.

It is a long way home now. Chores, medications, bathing, diapering, cares, concerns, doctor appointments and the emotional realities that slowly settle in.

I take a long hard look and settle into the comfortable disarray without trying to change it.

It is a long way home from what I knew before...yet I get there.