Lakeland Motel was a hovel. And that's
being a bit mean to your average, run-of-the-mill hovels, the ones
that don't have smoky rooms and rusty merry-go-rounds that revolve in
the wind on autumn nights as if it was the kids from “Another Brick
in the Wall (Part II).” Still, the low building was something you'd
pass anytime you went down to the beach in Pasadena, and when we
walked along the scrubby grass and weeds the other day where it once
stood, it was hard not to miss it a little bit.
It's great to be home. In some ways,
the reason you leave it in the first place is so that you can
appreciate it the more when you get back. My buddy grew up just on
other side of the woods from me, but this was the first time I'd seen
him since January, and we talked a lot about leaving. How when you're
away, “home” can still exist the way you remember it when you
were young, but every time you come back you realize what's changed,
and how that romantic idea gets farther away with every passing year.
Change isn't a bad thing – there's a good chance those who are left
behind notice the changes in you, too. But if you let yourself stay
stuck in the past, then the entropy that goes along with that
nostalgia will never let you truly go back. Only for a visit.
I left New Zealand three weeks ago. New
Zealand was my life for 2013 – it wasn't some trip, it was a
reality, something I lived and breathed and understood. Now, it's a
country on the other side of the world, a place that holds a lot of
memories, but that is part of the past now. And, much like home, it
hangs onto some romantic half-truth, a fragile essence that in all
likelihood would crumble if, years later, I were to try to revisit
that place from my youth.
But am I ever glad it happened. And,
even though it only took three weeks to get back into the rhythm of
the life I left behind, it's impossible to live out the rest of my
time as if New Zealand never happened.
There are plenty of stories in the
interim. The vegetarians on the redeye trans-Pacific flight who
decided they wanted the normal breakfast after all and nearly staged
a coup; the sunny waterfront of Vancouver in stark contrast to the
extreme poverty; buying that homeless guy his groceries; running
through Trudeau Airport to make one last connection to get back home;
flying in over St. John's, having not slept since somewhere near
Hawaii and collapsing in bed until 4:00 the next afternoon; drinking
and watching the sun rise from a hot tub, two evenings in a row;
realizing that clothes on the line in Old Perlican really do look
like a Newfoundland tourism commercial; sleeping in my own bed. There
are a lot of stories like that, but they don't really belong. This is
the story of the New Zealand adventure, and that one is at the end.
I'm home. And what a change, to go from
living out of a suitcase . . . to packing another one up again. One
load is already in transit to Fredericton, New Brunswick, and the
rest is going with me, at the end of next week. From one adventure to
another. My comfort zone has been pretty malleable these past seven
months, but I'm still pretty sure that I'm going outside of it again.
And, at last, I'm ready for it.
The blue backpack is in the crawl space
under the stairs, and that's where it's going to stay, filled with
maps, pamphlets, a pair of sneakers with the bottoms out of them, and
scuff marks straight from New Zealand.
My pounamu is
coming with me to New Brunswick. A reminder that maybe, just maybe,
you can't ever really go back . . . but that doesn't mean that that
never happened. Because it sure did – and it was great.
Cheers,
rb
