if I stand

I am officially unemployed.

Yesterday marked my last day of work. It felt a little surreal -- I've worked there for two years, the longest I've ever held one job, and I had planned on staying for many more -- but aside from one blinding bolt of seizing panic as I collected my things and walked down the hall for the last time, thinking that now I must face the stress of job hunting -- a bolt of panic quickly quelled; I've become a lot more stoic in some respects over the last four years, a lot more confident in myself and the provisions of my God, and I can't wait for the next adventure -- everything felt, not sad, but fabulous. I'm leaving the office in good hands; because of my organizational system my successor should have no trouble finding anything whatsoever; and I realized that I had planned that last moment for a long time -- back in May.

I never expected to go home. I have known since my adolescence that I hold a deep love (rrgh -- I wish "love" in English had more expressive and meaningful forms as it does in Greek) for my native soil, for the dreamy glacial valley, violently ripped from the land thousands of years ago and now still and at rest, of which I will always think as home. I knew I loved it -- the miles of vineyards, the union of sky and water, the hazy smudge of Canada on Lake Erie's northern shore, the mosaic play of greens on vines and trees and hills, the sweet dozing quiet of a land settled for hundreds of years, come to peace with the descendants of its settlers, holding the tang of stories and half-forgotten legends, the deep sharp throb of the ancient on the shale lakeshore where the long-vanished Eriez tribe thrived before their obliteration by the Iroquois.

But I never thought I could return to it. A matter of pride, in large measure -- I equated returning with failure, prodigality with shame. I had set my face far from my birthplace to make my own way, to carve my own life from the sky and land of a new place, to assert my independence.

And yet, the unhappier I grew in my isolation in Michigan, the more I longed, for just one year, to be home. To spend the Christmas season baking cookies with my mother, toasting my dad with his latest whisky discovery, caroling with longtime friends. To bike to Freeport Beach on summer mornings and cut my feet on the rocks; to whip down through Papermill Hollow at breakneck speed, hoping the momentum would carry me halfway back up the opposite hill; to wander along Sixteen Mile Creek slapping at mosquitoes; to clamber up orchard ladders hunting for the perfect peach, the unblemished cluster of cherries; to duck under spicy leaves grabbing at the ripest blueberries while the silver strands of modern scarecrows move lazily in a breeze suffocated by the rattle of cicadas. Just one more year. A vacation to my roots. A brief and lovely sojourn while I collect my ideas and forge my plans for the future -- a future from which, Jonah-like, I seem to have been running for far too long.

So here I stand, poised at the "mouth and the reunion of the known and the unknown," looking eagerly to the simultaneous past and future merged into an exciting present. I have no idea what awaits me -- and, for the first time in three years, that thought brings, not fear and uncertainty, but anticipation and elation. I'm crossing over into a new chapter, emerging from shadow to brilliant clarity, moving on.

This is joy.

I couldn't be happier. In eight hours my parents will arrive to load up all of my belongings and retrace the trail I blazed four years ago. In just over twenty-four I will be welcoming the open highway -- America's greatest metaphor for freedom, journey, independence and change -- on my way to someplace old, to greet something new. This is adventure. I'm finally heading toward the destination to which my internal compass has called me for years -- and, after having everything stripped down and away this past year, I think I finally have the beginnings of the vision to see -- the path, if not the final arrival -- and to follow.

Something inarticulable is surging in my pulse, something golden and electric and fiery and raw. I have thought, sometimes, these last couple of weeks, that if I were to get up in the dark in the middle of the night and look in the mirror, I would see light like sunshine in my eyes, radiating from my skin, searing the moldy air around me, burning off anything leftover that I need to leave behind. I have thought, sometimes, that were I to turn my head quickly enough, I might catch a transparent wisp of feathers. It doesn't seem that I will be merely traveling to my new stopover on my way to a brillant destiny. I feel like I'll be flying. The fire so long shut up in my bones can't be contained under my skin, by the limits of my body -- it's breaking free, splitting me open, and I glory in the ferocity of its eruption.