Today is the day before I leave for the actual odyssey that
this blog is named for. By this time tomorrow, I will be at Bard, and my family
will likely be gone. I feel, now, like a young adventurer standing on a dock
before the ocean, preparing to board a ship to explore the distant sea. The
metaphor is, perhaps, inaccurate. I’m only a four, four-and-a-half hour drive
from home, and with today’s technology I can keep my family in my pocket.
However, regardless of the relative accuracy of the metaphor, it is how I feel.
And, like that adventurer, I can’t help but take one last look over my shoulder
before I take the last step that exists between myself and the endless ocean.
I turned
eighteen a few short months ago. On that day my father,
covered in a kaleidoscope of ink himself, took me to get my first tattoo. I was
certain of my decision, and certain of the meaning. The tattoo, nearly an exact
copy of the cover art of my first publication, was intended to be a symbol of
the beginning of what will hopefully be a lengthy career in writing. That
meaning has not been lost, but my Dad told me the day I went in that tattoos
often evolve to take on meanings you did not expect, or realize, with time. He could
not have been more right.
Josh, a
truly remarkable artist, strove to remain true to the original artwork on my
book. An artist himself, though of a different sort, he was in a unique
position to understand the weight of the meaning of this particular tattoo.
However, some slight alterations were necessary to make the art, a cherry tree
in full bloom with lined-paper petals, work on a human arm. One such change,
easily the most noticeable, was the softening of the hard line where the edge
of the book ended into inky roots. The tattoo began, because of this
alteration, to represent more than the beginning of my writing career. It began
to symbolize myself, in past, present, and future. The roots where I came from,
the blossoms where I could one day be, and everything in between a sliding
scale of my personal reality.
Despite
coming from divorced parents, I have been lucky enough to have an exceptionally
stable family. My parents, all three of them, manage to be unerringly civil and
sometimes even friendly with each other. All of my grandparents have survived
well into my life, long enough to offer support and influence who I am and who
I will be. My paternal grandmother has been a particularly important figure in
my life. She manages to be both formidable and unendingly kind. She was a
single mother before we had achieved at least the illusion of gender equality,
and she took the added challenges of the time and bent them to her will.
My
father, an artist like me (a musician, a poet, a writer, a true renaissance
man), has always had an innate understanding of a need of the soul I don’t
think I could ever properly articulate, despite my love of words. My mother, an
easy and non-judgmental sounding board, always convinced I hold the keys to the
universe at my fingertips. My step-mom, the spark of hope alive in my chest
when the world seems a little less than worth it, the point of light that keeps
me from making the transition from disappointed idealist into cynicism. My
older brother, my built-in confidant, protector, and partner in crime. My uncle,
the moment of unabashed mischief. My family, those mentioned and those not, of
blood and otherwise. I’ve made my home in them far more than I ever did a
place, and I carry them with me as a part of me as I take the step from the
edge of the pier to the dock of the boat, as a part of me. And yet, in a way, I
leave them behind as well.
They say
you can never come home again. I wonder if that’s true.
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