Walking down to the field, I looked out over a sea of tents displaying wares from 4 or 5 different continents, none of them being North America. A crew from the Valley of Love and Delight displayed their work in the College Joinery. (That means furniture making, apparently.) Drums boomed a rhythm off of the surrounding hills. The poor lads from Pikeville must have had no idea what they were getting into.
It’s good to go home, to be home. It’s comforting to be welcomed and asked to return. Many voices asked if I had come to stay and lamented my ever leaving. This is very flattering, but a bit frightening as well. It is had to know whether it is you they want, or someone they think you are. Will the reality meet the expectation? If it does not, then what happens? Do they perhaps expect something from me which I know I am incapable of providing?
I try to be honest, but it is hard in a place that knows you well. Or knew you well once, and perhaps thinks you are that same person. It’s probably naive to think that the place has stayed the same too. Maybe what we can hope for is like a relationship with a parent in our adult years. To know someone so well as a child is not the same thing as knowing them as an adult. But as adults, there is probably nothing we want more than to be as known, and as open, as when we were kids. Home is a place where we should be able to do that as we are today.