We lit a fire to ward off the darkness during totality, to warm our hands against the chill as the temperature dropped and the sky went dark. Keeping the fire going gave me something to do, gave me a reason to stay busy.

When the light returned, four geese flew overhead on their way to the east. The birds began to sing like they do in the morning.

Steve and I stayed over at my parents’ house yesterday evening, so we didn’t have to drive out there today. Slept with the window open and looked out the window at the stars. The sky was clear yesterday. My first extended visit home since leaving.

All the pain of growing up is still held within the walls of my childhood home. Every time I visit, it’s still there.

I still experience pangs of grief, all the time, from the loss of – what, exactly? Home? Connection?

My experience of family isn’t the same as it used to be, because of the way people and connections change over time. I feel a sense of loss about this. I have not processed the changes. I have not mourned properly. A story I tell myself is that nothing will ever be the same again.

A story I think I have been telling myself, a story that I don’t often have the courage to face directly, is that all the good safe love is gone, used up, probably because I broke it when I was having a bad day, because that’s something I am capable of doing.

And then, soon after that, it was time to move away from home.

It took so much to uproot me from that place.

That’s a story I have not been able to translate into words until just now.

It doesn’t have to be a true story to be an exceptionally powerful one.

I have been carrying such a sense of finality. Like a nail in a coffin.

Steve says I can still make good memories in that house, and that all of the loving memories are still there – even when negative memories command attention in a way that so often blocks out the joy.

And, like – do you remember that one scene from A Wrinkle in Time where Meg goes back to save Charles Wallace