Over the years I have grown increasingly aware of the fact that I simply do not understand this place called "home".
It's deceiving, because you really think you do know all about home. That's like, the definition of the place.
Wrong.
Home is a tricky thing to define. I once gave the definition of home as the place where I've set my journals down. But today, I'll set the definition as that place where you grew up and where your family still lives.
For me, very clear and brilliant thoughts almost never occur in the armchair. I can't just sit down and think, expecting witty connections to just occur.
Instead, they happen while I'm doing things. It would be a rare occasion that my mind is actually focused on the activity before me. It's always wandering, and it does its best wandering while my hands or ears are occupied. The thoughts will come while I'm walking to class, or during a homily, or (sadly) while someone else is talking. They'll pop into my head and demand attention, and who am I to refuse?
So if you'd look, 2 years ago you'd have said that I was at the pub in Donegal talking to Mario, but in reality my attention was actually on the nature of going home. Spinning around, making clever observations and struggling against the cloudy monstrosity of language to find clever ways to express them.
For a child, going home is the natural end to the day.
For an adult, going home is an intensely complicated affair.
Going home has the potential to be one of the most satisfying as well as frustrating experiences an adult can have. Home is the comfortable host of many happy memories, so going home should be a peaceful and warm experience.
But of course, soon into college I recognized that it was exactly NOT peaceful and warm. It was often nerve-racking and difficult, and above all it was annoying. Something about going home was supremely annoying, and I really couldn't put my finger on what that was.
However, there in the pub with Mario, it all made sense. You see, he had just given me the honor of watching him go home. I accompanied him across the Emerald Isle to his tiny hometown. We drove for a very long time through a valley, until we could turn and climb the right-hand slope and arrive at his house.
And that's when everything changed.
You see, the Mario I knew was very calm and excellent with people. He strongly disliked conflict, and was very good at defusing a tense situation.
It took 4 hours for this to completely change. In 4 hours, he had a domestic with his dad and we were kicked out of the house. 4 hours, and his character completely changed.
His mom sat with me in the kitchen the whole time, nursing her tea while the hot Irish tempers pounded against the wall. She smiled her soft knowing smile, and meekly said, "some things never change."
"SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE?!" I raged inside my head later that evening at the pub, back with the Mario that I had come to know. "Do you even know your child?!"
That's when it occurred to me: no, she doesn't know him. Not anymore. Mario had been away from home for quite some time now, and all that while he'd been growing and changing and getting to be more of himself.
And all of this happened away from the eyes of his parents. To them, a child left home and a child returned. It's like they set a book down, and when he returns they simply pick the book right back up and the characters and setting and plot are all exactly as they were when they put the book down.
The problem is, homecoming is not like picking up a book where you left off. They didn't account for the change in Mario, 'cause they didn't see it happen. He had changed immensely, but their Expectation remained exactly as it was.
Expectations are dangerous things. They prime you for an experience, forming the kind of embrace that you open to an event. And therefore, they begin to form experiences.
I'm really susceptible to expectation. It's supremely annoying, watching myself change the frequency of my voice and my grammar and the very way I form thoughts just to meet an expectation.
Like with Matt.
Matt sees me as a snot-nosed sophomore. It was the first thing he saw of me. And he saw this through the eyes of his return from the novitiate, so he looked back at this image from his past (me) from which he had grown immensely and he snarled with a knowing disgust. I was the image of his juvenile days, and there I have remained ever since.
And though I think and act as if I've grown out of that Sophomore Self, Matt hasn't stopped expecting it from me. And therefore, when I talk to Matt I watch in frustrated amazement as my maturity evaporates and I bend to meet his expectation.
(what a delightful scheme I've crafted to avoid blame for not being genuine in conversation)
So when one goes home and meets the expectations of home, a war begins. The expectation is that the book can be picked up: the 18-year-old that left will simply be returning.
Within hours, the years of intense growth all-of-a-sudden threaten to evaporate. But you dig your feet in. First, you avoid the problem. You withdraw into your room and sleep, or sneak a book out for a walk and sit in the park for hours, or jam your evenings full of dinners with friends who understand the problem.
But you can't avoid the interaction and eventually are forced to spend your time in the Expectation Chamber. And in the Chamber, you become ornery and short and attempt to cut the conversation away with rudeness.
If you're like Mario, you might even start yelling and get kicked out of the house. But his mom was wrong. Things have changed. He's no longer yelling because he's a hormonal teenager. This time he's yelling at the Expectations. He's at war, and this is his defense.
I think that's partially why I got my tattoo. No, not to prove to the Expectations that things really have changed. Really, I didn't even plan on telling my parents. It was for me, so that when I retired behind a closed door I could lift up my shirt and see the mark of my change. There, unmistakably, the permanent sign (of ideas that all arose after my departure from home) would call me out of the Expectations and back to adulthood.
The tattoo wasn't just a mark of rebellion; it was armor for battle.
But a weird thing happened this last time I've come home: there was skim milk in the fridge.
My family is a 2% family. We've been getting 2% for decades. Good, healthy milk.
So you can imagine my shock when I opened the fridge to find skim milk. The healthy bug hit the house, and somehow healthy milk was a casualty.
And then I realized: home is changing too. All this time I thought my parents were the villains, tainting my homecoming with Expectations. Right then, I realized that they too were warring against the tyranny of failure-to-recognize-change. My tyranny.
I expected that home was a place that was necessarily familiar. And sure, Familiarity can be an important ingredient in establishing the place called home, but eventually, Familiarity will fall to Change, and your family will start buying skim milk.
But the next day is really when the worlds collided.
I was upstairs, but the sound traveled. The conversation reached my ears. They were discussing my tattoo. And they were...oddly ok with it.
(In a young house filled with young children, the absence of those children is a reprieve. In an old house filled with visiting-children, the absence of those children is an opportunity to discuss them.)
The day before, I realized that home had changed. My parents are older and the house bears the signs of Empty Nest. Diets have started to change, and so have the characters that embraced them. And yet every time I returned I expected the place of familiarity. I had expectations and Home warred against them. But now I was ready to see home for who it had become.
And home was ready too. The tattoo was shocking, because they could see that I've changed. It was inescapable. But they adjusted quickly. The Expectation Josh would never have done that, so clearly we are no longer dealing with Expectation Josh.
So, for the first time in 4 years, I'm in the beginning stage of a healthy homecoming. Healthy for me, and healthy for home.
Just in time to disappear forever.
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