NAH-KEV-HO-EYEA-ZIM

Translated from the Cheyenne Indian language, it means “We are always returning home again”.

And so we all do the same at some point. We go back to where our lives began. We return to our parents, to people who have known us since birth, who have watched us grow and develop into the people we are today. I suspect that the experience is more unsettling for them than for us.

I’ve just completed such a journey, spending the past five days in my hometown in Illinois. Each trip back stirs up memories of a loving and carefree childhood. But at the same time, it seems that these pilgrimages also loosen my grip on the past and force me to face the future in the place I now call “home”

With each visit my parents, in my eyes at least, seem to be a little older…a little frailer…a little more forgetful. And I find that we disagree on more things each time I visit. At times they seem sadly bewildered by the son they’ve raised, but now seems to become more of a stranger to them with each passing year. The common ground we once shared is rapidly disappearing. They no longer experience the same things I do in my daily life, and don’t see how those experiences work their change in my attitudes and beliefs. The chasm grows wider between us.

None of this changes my love for them, or theirs for me. It’s just that neither of us understands the other quite as much as we used to.

So, time marches on. And I will return home again next year to find even more has changed in them, and in me.

NAH-KEV-HO-EYEA-ZIM

- Jaydog