Hiraeth-(n.) a homesickness for a home to which you can not return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for lost places in you past.
We all have our moments of hiraeth, I'm going to tell you mine.
It was almost heaven. Blue ridge mountains, and the new river valley. Every day I would wake up to the sound of birds calling my name. It was as if they were saying, "Wake up, wake up boy, there's a new day outside and you should come out and see it." And most of the time I would see it, I had to go to school so I don't get much choice in seeing the new day or not.
The sun would rise behind me, slowly rising behind the pine trees. And as the first of the sunlight touches my skin I'd get that 'hero riding into the sunset' feel. I have to say life was good; except when it wasn't. And there's plenty of times when it wasn't, like when the rain came pouring and I stood there by the bus stop wanting nothing but the rain to stop.
Each drop of rain was like a knife cutting through my skin. But with each cut of the rain I start noticing finer things, like the water that was clinging onto the spiderweb, or the family of birds that was perched in a tree waiting for the rain to stop, or even the puddle under my feet and what pretty shapes the rain was making when it struck the water.
That was where I grew up, in the mountains where the moon shine bright and the night was silent. Where the river was clear and the valleys were deep. The mountains and rivers brought me up and I grew into their rhythm. And I became brothers with the hills and the streams, they were my flesh and blood.
But I had to leave my family behind, the trees, deers, coyotes, beavers. And now I peer from my window and looked at the face of the mountain that brought me up, far far away.
No comments:
Post a Comment