This Must Be The Place
By: Emma Poe
Tags: Acceptance, Home, Aging, Family History, Creative Non Fiction

The hospital window takes up most of the wall and the city lazily lays before me. The landscape has been etched in my mind since my first day of life, but it has become a Lego town where the pieces have been shaken up by someone who has made a half-hearted attempt at replacing them

Let’s pick up the Roy Roger’s and put a shiny bank there instead and also get rid of that 7–11 and stick in blinds and drapes store in. Because who needs a diet coke and some tums when you can have brand new shutters.

At five in the morning, I still haven’t slept, my body lays all crunched up in the little area used as a visitor's bed. The machines go off at unnerving intervals and any journey towards sleep is detoured through a worry zone.

Is there a statute of limitations on becoming an orphan? How can a mother of two suddenly transform back to the scared little child?

I still remember the time here with just my father and me. Looking at this same window, I watched the roads glazed in ice that had stopped the whole city in its tracks. Although I had some limited knowledge that my father was dying, I could almost feel the mirage of safeness in our little cocoon as we smiled at the hilarity of a metropolis unable to move. I still believe we both knew nothing could get us in that frozen wasteland.

Now everything feels strange and foreign, my sense of familiar comfort gone. She —who has always protected me— has become my delicate baby who needs reassuring

I am out of my depth.

When my uncle drops by, I run to the home of my childhood to gather her comfort things. She needs that red robe, some fuzzy socks and I have to find the right puzzle pieces of her favorite music to make her whole again.

On the way there, I listen to the cover of a Talking Heads song my daughter has sung and recorded to remind me I am warm and loved.

Home

Is Where I Want to Be

Pick Me Up and Turn Me Round

I always think home to be my comfortable shoe I share with my husband and kids.

Until….

I return to my hometown, the holder of my first eighteen years of life. I can slowly feel my limbs and heart become knock-kneed and unsure as I turn into our neighborhood

Outside of my parent’s house, I smile at the holly tree leaves on the ground. I have sharp memories of being six and strategically picking my barefooted way through the minefield those sticker leaves had left for me. As I cried at a mistake made in an unusually tricky maneuver, my Mama picked the leaf out and kissed my foot better.

I want to climb the Catalpa tree in the backyard, lean against the branch with its long cigars and mischievously drop the white blossoms in my Mama’s hair as she watches my Pop lighting the coals with just a dash of lighter fluid.

Oh! I got plenty of time

Oh! You got light in your eyes

I’m there in a moment that stretches the length of my life, watching my childhood swirl gently around me and I smile at the mulberry bush, reflexively reaching up to brush the stains off my lips.

I’m pulled back to my earlier fears of being left behind. No matter how the future may play out, I will never be alone. Thoughts of the word Orphan become ridiculous and melodramatic while I watch shadows and apparitions so substantial that I can taste and touch them. Closing my eyes for a brief second, I’m quiet and sleepy as I lay between my mother and father, and I know that this will always be the place.

And you’re standing here beside me

I love the passing of time

Never for money, always for love

Cover up and say goodnight, say goodnight

Hello. Good to see you. Yes, I’m happy to be home