There’s No Place Like Home

Coming back to breathe again

By Bailey Mount Managing Editor

It’s harder and harder to go home these days. Getting older means getting more obligations, more responsibilities, and more things keeping me from being in a place where I have none of those. It’s work, school, gym, homework, sleep, eat — and work while doing half of that. I’m not complaining; I love my job.

But sometimes, there’s a weekend when I can take a respite. A weekend where the most I have to worry about is washing the mountain of dishes in the sink and changing a litter box. A weekend where I can go home.

Home is Lancaster, California, a small desert city-town about two hours from here. A friend of mine once said, “We’re too big to be a small town, but too small to be a city.” He wasn’t wrong. There are at least six cool hangout spots in Lancaster, and half of the kids who graduated with me frequent them when they’re home.

That’s cool. I don’t travel there to see them and go out. I come home to hang out with my family and the seven people I can still stomach after braving high school with them.

That being said, I would never make it there if not for my parents. They come get me. The next two, sometimes three hours, are spent on a dark freeway, watching the taillights of traffic illuminate my mother’s face. She looks the same, I think. Other times, she looks older and I’m afraid. I’m reminded of how seldom I can visit now.

We all talk — them about what’s going on at home, I about my work here. My brother’s a senior in high school now. Yes, I’d love to come to the football game tomorrow night and hear him play. Yes, I’d love to watch a movie this weekend. Yes, everything down here is fine.

The bustling city recedes into the hills and mountains. The greenery disappears. It’s replaced with familiar scrublands and hard dirt. And, once we round a specific curve in the road, the yellows and reds of my hometown lights splay out for a moment in glorious color. I’m home.

It’s another fifteen minutes through the outskirts of town before I’m truly home. I’m home Thursday nights, usually around 11. It’s a school night. But my brother is always awake to unlock the door and throw his too tall, too long, teenage-boy body all around my shoulders.

It’s nice. Home is so different from Long Beach that my whole demeanor changes. Lancaster is playing Yu-Gi-Oh! with my brother, watching B-movies with my boyfriend, and most importantly — seeing my 15-pound cat. It’s getting harder and harder to come home these days. Instead of being the one worried, I’m the one being worried about.

But I’m home.