Homesick

    There was the type of silence in the air that you only get when there could be a great deal of noise, when possibly there should be a great deal of noise, but there was no noise at all.  It was a vacuous silence that worked to suck my thoughts out of the back of my head in order to fill the empty space left by the lack of sound.  Not ten minutes earlier I had harbored thoughts of a triumphant return to the backwater coaltown I used to call home.  Now, at eleven thirty in the evening, I lay awake, staring at what used to be my ceiling, wondering what my friends at college were doing while my family slept soundly down the hall.
     Ten minutes earlier the car had just turned off the highway onto Exit 3, the exit to Waynesburg, my hometown.  After a lifetime of returning to town through this exit, my body came to know the turn very well.  No matter how soundly I slept, my head would always pop up as the car bent around the curve of the exit ramp.  This night was no different.  From a slumber that had kept me heavily sedated as my mother navigated the highways to home, the familiar shift in the cars momentum prompted my swift return to the land of the coherently conscious.
    I watched as familiar sights ran past my window; gas stations where different groups of reliefers congregate like street gangs too lazy to start gang wars over whether the BP or the Sunoco station was the better turf, the fair grounds where the county fair and the Tuesday flea markets went on in the midst of the heady aroma of livestock, the Yum-Yum Tasty Donut Shop where my friends and I used to go for a late night grease fix in the midst of the heady aroma of the "reliefers," colloquial for "welfare recipient," who managed to avoid spending all of their welfare checks on booze and decided to spend the rest on a cup of coffee while smoking the cheapest cigarettes food stamps can buy.  All the old places were there, just like I remembered them.  It had only been two months, after all.
    When I made it home, my sense of familiarity melted away.  I stared at my house, or rather "the building where my family lived," and marveled at how naked it looked.  When I had left at the end of August, my mother's flowerbeds were in full bloom and her rhododendron bushes seemed to reach halfway up the house.  Not a blossom was still around to greet me and the once-towering rhododendrons were now cowering stumps.
    "What happened to the rhododendrons, Mom?"  I asked as I my imagination struggled to fill the rhododendron-free zone with shadows of comfort.
    "They were getting a bit too rebellious so I had to cut them back." Answered my mother flatly, completely disregarding the feelings of the rhododendron bushes.  I made a mental note to not mention my plans for blue hair until I was safely back at State College.
    My father greeted me at the door.  There was a brief hug, and then he was back to bed, our arrival had awakened him and he was quick to get back to his hard-earned sleep.
    "Nice to see you too, Dad."  I thought to myself as I carried my bag into the basement, one extra-large load of dirty clothes for the maternal laundry service to take care of.  I was back upstairs in no more than thirty seconds and there was no one around.  My entire family was well on their way to dreamland and I was nowhere near sleepy at twenty-five minutes after the hour of eleven on a Friday night.  It was still early in the evening according to my schedule.  I wasn't going to sleep.  I'd just call up my friends and see what's up for the evening.
    "Ring…ring…ring…" no answer at Nate's house after three rings.  "Ri-click!" my receiver was quickly reunited with the hook before Nate's phone could finish ringing a fourth time.  Nate lived with his grandparents, and I realized that they probably went to bed well before my family.
    So, no Nate, I'll just call Sara…
    "Ring… hello?"  The voice on the other line was not Sara's, but Sara's mom's, and she did not sound happy to be awake.  "Hello, who is this?"
    "Um…hi," I began to hope that Sara's mom hadn't been enjoying her rest very well and was happy for the interruption, "this is Luke, is Sara there?"
    "The rule is no calling after ten, Luke." She was only marginally mad.  If she could have reached through the phone, I would have only received half a dozen smacks.  Luckily for me she could not travel physically via telephone wires and was forced instead to be somewhat reasonable.  "I'll see if she's awake, though."
    "Thank you very much.  I'm sorry I woke you up.  I hadn't realized…" my voice trailed off as I slowly realized that she hadn't been on the phone since "very." I never was much of one to talk to myself, so I decided to wait patiently for someone to talk to.
    "She'll have to call you tomorrow, Luke."
    "Um, thanks, and I'm sorry I woke you up."
    "Just don't make a habit of it."
    I'm not planning on calling very often from college.  I should be able to handle that…"I don't think that will be a problem."
    "Good night, Luke."
    "Uh, good -click- night?"
    So, no Nate, no Sara, I'll just call Casey…only problem, Casey is at college right now, and so are JP, Drew, Courtney, DJ, Olin and Ed.  What friends do I have left to turn to at eleven twenty-five on a very lonely Friday night?  You guessed it…my bed.
    And so here I lay after ten minutes that seemed like an eternity in what used to be my favorite resting-place.  This isn't my bed any more, though, this isn't even my room.  As soon as I broke the mystical mental seal I had placed over the door when I left at the end of summer, I noticed evidence of other inhabitants.  Three pairs of volleyball court shoes were lined up neatly under the foot of the bed, uniformly mocking me as their tongues hung out.  Miniature messes, a toy-bracelet here, a Barbie doll there, dotted my once thoroughly buried floor.  A pile of YM's dominated the top of my dresser in place of my usual pile of clothes, dirty and clean in even distribution.  It all kept a question circulating through my head, "Where did all this estrogen come from?"
    Even more disconcerting than my sisters' presences in my room was my own presence.  Standing alone on an otherwise barren dresser stood a black leather shrine to yours truly.  About a dozen different versions of my face gazed back at me from within the leather frame of my senior photo proofs.  As I judged which visages I approved of and which failed to capture the "true me" or failed to flatter me to a point I was content with, an image of my mother involved in the same contemplation came creeping into my imagination.  Did she sit on my bed some nights, enveloped in the same silence that now held me, contemplating which of the many faces best fit her memory of me, wondering what my face looked like at that moment?  Did my sisters come into this room and remember the space I used to fill?  Did my father catch sight of the ancient Mac, it's beige case fading to gray with age, that sat on my desk and remember his son who wanted his own space to write with strong enough conviction to click away at the keys of a technological dinosaur older than CD drives and more worn out than the media coverage of the Lewinsky/Clinton affair?
    As I lay, thoughts still rushing out to dampen the sound of silence, my own memories come floating up.  The shrine worked its mojo on my brain, summoning spirits of the past into the front of my imagination.  Dominating my memories now is the largest item in my room, which also happens to be "the most frequently used," "used for the longest period of time," and "used with the greatest amount of satisfaction," it could be nothing else but my bed.  Memories of sub-zero nights when seven layers of blankets protected me from the chill, of the perfect pillow, yielding or firm in just the right spots, of the gentle support of a stiff mattress tempered by the caressing fingers of an egg-carton pad, memories of the many good nights of rest I'd had instill in me a temporary peace. So many big points in my life happened in this bed.  So many of my greatest thoughts came to me as I lay restless among the folds of familiar blankets.
    My mind's eye is starting to drift back to those memories as the present moment becomes a transparent pane of glass bound by blankets and a headboard…

    It was a cold January morning, about four thirty, and I'd just woken up with a terrible tremble careening through my bowels.  As freely as my internal movements during that bout of diarrhea was the free release of snow from the heavens.  Blizzard proportions of snow blanketed Waynesburg and cancelled school the entire week.  While every other kid in the district was outside with snowballs and sleds, I was in my bed with bananas and applesauce.
    It was the night before the SAT's, well past one.  I had spent the earlier part of the evening at a school dance and was burning the after-midnight oil attempting to create a little poetry.  The few hours of sleep I got that night prepared me well enough for the test the next morning.  The recuperative powers of my bedding allowed me to be bright eyed and bushy-tailed for my six thirty wake-up call.
    It was the night after the Cinderella Ball of my senior year, it would probably be more accurate to say that it was very early the morning after the Ball.  My date and I lay entwined in each other as the sun rose, the first rays of morning caressing the curves of her back as my hands had done earlier in the evening.

    Now it's my first night home from college and still only about eleven thirty.  The few blankets I have do not fit the bed at all.  In order to fully protect myself from the chill of the evening, I am forced into my best interpretation of "scared armadillo."  The egg-carton padding is gone now, I absconded with it to college and opted not to take in back home with me.  The same fate has befallen my beloved pillow, leaving me to make due with an ornamental photo from the living room.   It is far too early for my brain to try and shutdown so the lack of distractions has drawn me into a mood of arduous introspection.  I can't feel the proximity of any friends or family through the great wall of oppressive silence.
    The over-riding sense of discomfort is making me regretfully aware of my new identity as a jigsaw piece in the wrong puzzle.  I used to fit here, but the puzzle changed, and so did I.  Where once there was a cozy, familiar house there is now the scenery of development and improvement.  Where there was a space just for me there is now space in which my sisters can grow.  Where a bed once lay in what was once my bedroom there is now only a window to yesterday.