Its Amazing the Acumen a Trip Home Brings.

Ah, Memorial Day weekend. A weekend that now hold new bittersweet feelings….as well as feelings of unbridled rage and unforgiving remorse. Still, in turn it has become a call for the requisite pilgrimage home.

You see, its was one year to the day this past weekend. One year to the day of my grandmothers passing, and the vile treatment of this floral form by the X forever known as C.

However, it is also a reminder of smiles, of future, of life. This past memorial day weekend was one of the best EVER. In fact, i do believe I will take this moment to call it the best ever.

I followed my heart, as I always do. I visited my grandmother, he name now chiseled into the granite of remembrance, a field of green and brown all that remains to the naked eye.

But more than that, I finally made the effort to get my hair styled by A, my original ex-girlfriend. My first *love* (my first…..*first*…you know?). You see, she now owns her own hair salon. She is married, with 2 daughers. She drives a minivan. She could barely admit that last fact to me. We laughed about it wholeheartedly.

I was the senior in highschool. She was a sophomore. I took her to her first prom. I took her to homecoming. Road trips. Adventures. The part of the highschool experience that is often made into movies. Those were our memories we laughed about. As she trimmed my hair. I joked with her 20 year old employee. B. B called me cute. I laughed. indeed, it seems like nothing changed. We discussed being a parent. She started to talk about breast-pumps and I cringed. She giggled. Stabbings and beatings are fine, but breast-pump talk was not. I paid her more than I should have. I smiled and told her I was proud of her. She gushed. We hugged and parted ways. But not before we talked about "Twilight." And she said "i relate so much to Bella." And we laughed again.

I spent the rest of that day with my cousin, helping him shop. My heart dropped as I realized more and more how he was picking the way "the family" and not of success. He chose to work construction instead of taking a non-paid internship of some prestige. I scolded him a bit for this, but I’m afraid my opinion doesn’t hold the wait it used to.
We went swimming in our aunts pool. I convinced him to attempt to dive through a child-sized doughnut inner-tube. He dove. It stuck around his waist, and deflated. We all laughed.

I spent Saturday with my grandfather. We visited my grandmother, went out to dinner, and sat on the front porch of the house I grew up in, talking. My job makes conversation so easy…so many people have so many legal questions, or love to hear so many legal stories.

As night drew on, my mother and aunt sat out on the porch with me, and he watched the neighborhood come alive. The house across the street continues to deal drugs. Up the street, a late-teens girl sat on a metal lawnchair on the sidewalk. 3 men, dressed in "street" attire, danced around her, bottles in hand. Down the street, a man worked tirelessly in the darkness, lit only by a small work lamp, as he reconstructed the inner-workings of an ATV.  The night would not have been complete with the resounding thunder of gunfire, coming this time, from Park Street. You see, after hearing enough shots, you learn to tell the location…

Sunday was the anticipated day of HersheyPark. This time, I went to Hershey with some of my oldest friends, people I used to hang with back in 1996-1998. Some of them I hadn’t seen since that time. Of course, one or two were no-shows. I’d have to pretend to be surprised, its always the same people who pretend to care and let the world down.

We rode the coasters, adventured into the new "boardwalk" waterpark (which included a "waterworks" ride which looked like a playset in the park, in an aquatic setting. Climb the steps, go down the waterslide. To spice it up, mounted watercannons (Which could be aimed) were placed throughough. Funnels placed on pivotes, which dumped water when it filled on unsuspecting people…and dangling ropes which, when pulled, sprayed water in a well devised trap.
Quickly, my friends and I secured these bastions. We waged war on the small children, the teenagers, and best of all, the unsuspecting parents.
We ate icecream. While eating icecream, it began to pour-down rain. Thunder and lightning included. We made it out alive. Laughing.

My grandfather, for the first time in my life, let me drive "the van." The van is no mini. Full sized. Enough seats for a small army, and enough room to sleep in for a night.
"If only we had this 10 years ago" we thought. We would have had overnight trips to ocean city or new york.
That was probably why i wasn’t allowed to drive it.
Now, of course, i simply drove everyone home.

Home.

6 Hours of travel later, here I am. Back in missouri. Sitting at my computer, trying to recapture the weekend. Trying to recapture my writing on this site.

But most of all, smiling as I remember each moment.

Smiling.

Oodles o’ love,
Erotique