familiar

I’m back in my childhood home. I hear the familiar CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK of my mother’s cutting board; the smell of tomato sauce with meatballs simmering low on the stovetop; the rushing rumble of the Long Island Railroad passing by every hour or so, day and night.

A 36-year-old father sleeps in the bedroom that defined my teenage years. It’s the room I’d go to sit alone with my guitar and learn about myself. It’s the room where I learned what music really is: an alchemical pathway for emotion to move through me and transform.

Before that key inflection point, I was just playing notes, practicing scales, and learning songs. The world opened itself to me on that bedroom floor.

Now, it is the main guest bedroom.

Every visit back here feels like a regression of time. Part of me slips back into the old roles and patterns of childhood. Yet these patterns are met with the paradox of being a father and my undeniable evolution as a human being. I feel the pull of being tethered to both worlds at once, stretched out across time.

Now, an inner child is held in the embrace of a father who’s doing his best he can.