My head hits the pillow and all of a sudden I remember being five and running across the field next door to feed my good friend the horse.  He was dark dark brown, close to black.  I don’t care what I named him.  It was probably Lucky or something like that.

Then there was trying to float through the four foot tall golden grasses to make flattened nests so no one would see your tracks to the secret forts.  Where the power of solar energy struck you for the first time when you stuck your hands down in the red clay of the hole Dad was digging to plant that pine, which eventually grew too tall and obstructed the view, and felt the warmth from the sun! even though the sun was setting.  What?!  Dad never does anything fast.  The sun would be setting before the hole was dug.  How could that ground be still warm and how many worms are there in it?

And the igloos in winter, and the hot tubing anytime.  Or just watching the valley change with passing clouds, when they weren’t descended upon us in a dense fog.   Or the sky at night where the entire universe was right there.  Right there!  Wherever we are in that stupid spiral of the the milky way.  Every single piece of stardust is there and then down on the valley floor little spots of human made stars on their little modern homesteads, until you get over to the east side Albany cluster with its poop smelling paper mill.  How do you just let go of being on the brink of such an amazing piece of this planet?  So close to civilization but still so far removed.  So safe over the hills, on the edge.  The embodiment of the love and security that only the luckiest of us ever get to experience.  So safe.

Oh my god.  The first time you realize there is a space in time when you see the rain coming and it hasn’t hit you yet because you were faced south at the right moment on the trampoline and you got to inhale and feel it hit you and you just laugh with your friend about it.  Neither one of you can believe it.  Or the time the sun rose right behind a clear east skied Mt. Hood casting a perfect silhouette on the pink and grey valley cloud cover when Mom was driving me into middle school.  Perfect.  We stopped for a bit to marvel at it because it was so extraordinary.  That only happens once in a lifetime.  Guaranteed.  Or just being able to fall asleep on the sun warmed couch in front of the tall tall windows after school.  That happens more than once in a lifetime.  Guaranteed.

I wonder how long the loss of the is place, with all my memories, the place I thought I would get married at and bring my babies to play and revel in, where the dogs never wanted to leave, will come upon me like this.  Just a onslaught of sensory and memory.  Who gets to grow up like that?  With all the world out in front of you, constantly changing but you know what color the mustard field will be in the spring and how it will change in the summer.  The changing hues from the harvest or spring plow.

How do you stop missing something like that?  When the colors and the smells are driven so deeply into your soul?

People change, people die.  All you have left are the memories, which are intangible in themselves.  But the objects that are the foundations for the memories.  They can endure.  The set the stage to play it out on on and return to, grounding down into it and triggering the memories.   Homes, places don’t have to die.  They survive the shortness of the human lifespan and fallible brain cache.  People are driven to pay homage to physical places.  It is part of our nature.  As close as we get to philopatry.  These places endure, after all the time has past we can still reach out and touch these place and are moved by them.  We make architecture important in the sentimentality of our cultural history.   Why would a childhood home like this be any different?   How could something like the Notre Dame Cathedral or Stonehenge or the pyramids be anymore compelling or significant that stepping out onto that pink concrete that Daddy had poured first thing after moving in?  It’s going to be warm or freezing, but you are going to hit it with your bare feet.  Into the sun or wishing you could get swept away into the opaque mist of those low lying clouds or maybe to chase down the orange tabby cat to snuggle.  Lets face it, he’s running to you in the rain or snow knowing he’s wanted inside.  But now he’s gone too.  Maybe just peeking your face out when you get older and less adventurous to inhale that sharp, crisp  scent.  How else would you know the snow is coming?

It keeps you up late at night by times knowing that it’s gone.  It’s just gone.  Like watching the seasons change the valley and the ornamental cherries.  Not the firs really.  Except for the springtime lime green tips, so I guess they did change too.  Or how those cloud patterns moved across the valley farms or the four foot grass next door always got mowed down around September even after we had grown out of trying to create our secret spaces.  The wind on those cloudy nights never stayed either.  This is how you rationalize it.  Like experiencing that impermanence would prepare you for the ultimate loss of your home.  Your heart.  Sometimes it all comes rushing back though.  Everything.  Everything that no camera could ever capture or any words would really ever properly express.  It just comes sweeping up on you from the side when your head hits the pillow, out of nowhere and the tears you thought you were done with after the last time pour down.  You can’t stop that remembering or the longing.  All that working logic goes right out the window so you finally get up and write about it so maybe this will be the last time.