Going home

For Glenda and other displaced persons

Two old broads on a rainy street in Hartford. And yes: Go, Cards.

This past Saturday, we met my high school friend Glenda and her husband, Ken, for dinner at the iconic (her word, and it’s a good one) First & Last Tavern in Hartford.

It had been 44 years since we talked, but I wasn’t worried. Glenda was a fellow Cardinal at Webb City High School. She was a quiet girl with a little laugh at the end of her sentences. She seemed inordinately kind, with just the right amount of stubbornness. Neither of us would return to high school on a bet, though if you saw my yearbook, you’d think I had a great run.

Our teachers sat us alphabetically, and that is how we got to know one another. She was on the debate team. She was also a committed Baptist, and she remembers the two of us spending class time trying to convert one another. I don’t remember that, but it sounds about right, even though I considered my brand of fundamentalism something of a hair shirt too cruel to foist off on people. I regret nearly every door I knocked for Jesus, as it wasn’t really Jesus I was sharing, but a bastardized, judgmental, ugly version of same. Sorry, Joplin. Sorry, Webb City. Sorry, Jesus.

Glenda had a similar realization about her own strict upbringing, and she grew up to be a poet, an English teacher and a debate coach in Idaho. A few years ago, we found one another on Facebook and from her posts, I saw she, too, had strayed far from her original pew. We had loads to talk about, and her accent, her laugh, her stories made being in her company feel like a warm blanket. I don’t know how bored were our husbands, but as we parted, she and Ken gave us a huge box of Idaho potatoes, which was funny and sweet.

Yesterday morning, we were texting our goodbyes. They’d planned to hit New Haven on their way home, but the Peabody is closed, and Glenda figured they would just start toward home. After two weeks of traveling, she was ready.

“I’m not sure when I became a Westerner,” she wrote. I don’t know when I became what-passes-for-a-New-Englander, either, but yeah. Only in the last few years when I visit family in Missouri do I say things like “I’m flying home tomorrow.” For years, it was “I’m flying back,” or some equally less-attached statement, as if my decades in Connecticut were just a passing fad, as opposed to Connecticut as a choice. It’s not like I ever wanted to live in Missouri again, but it felt disloyal to call anywhere else home. Silly, I know, especially since there were and are parts of my home state that are a little hair-shirty to me. Wolfe was right: You can’t go home again, and that’s OK if you find a place where you can roam freely (Idaho) or where you can settle into a crisp and beautiful fall, with the expectation of a cold winter to come (the Godless Northeast).

Back in Idaho, Glenda said they’ve already had their first winter. They’ll get a little break, and then whoosh! Thar she’ll blow. As I wrote that sentence, the wind picked up outside, and sent a chilly blast through the window. I need to wrestle my thick winter socks out of a box somewhere. In a few weeks, it will be cold and the days will be short, and that’s OK. You can put up with a lot when you’re home.