To keep you from being homesick

[The found photograph. By unknown photographer, probably my father.]

The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect, and as for that object, it depends upon chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves die.

~~Marcel Proust

I bought a new desk to write on. I’m not sitting at it writing this; I’m sitting at our dining room table where my laptop lives pretty much all the time. The new desk is quite a bit bigger than the old one, which is great for me to spread out and do whatever it is that I do. To make room for the new item, I had to go through the chaos of the space adjacent to my writing chair. The first task was to empty the desk drawer. I cannot tell you how much stuff I had in there. An unopened set of dice, about five erasers, and numerous fountain pens. I haven’t been able to get some of them to write the way I like to write. The exception is my fine point LAMY. I like it.

There were copies of obits for family and friends. A publicity brochure from the school where I taught for eleven years. It features eager students, desperate to learn science. My back is to the camera, but I know it’s me. I remember that shirt. A small key linked to a large key, a coil of sturdy string, tied up like a mountain climbing rope. Two small mini-biners and a photo. As I was boxing all that stuff, I put the photo to one side.

I needed a break so I sat back in my chair and picked up the small photo again. Why was it glued to a piece of cardboard? I turned it over and there was a short handwritten note…in my mother’s hand. It read:

To keep you from being homesick.

Love, Mom

“The Homestead”

Wow. I haven’t seen this picture in years, decades even. I studied it carefully. It was a little hard to see as it was quite underexposed. I flipped it over again, and again…reading the short note.

I fell into a nostalgic moment. Always trying to fight the constant flood of memories that I often get when I stop to think about the years that have passed. I’ve always been prone to thinking about my youth, Owego, the house..the homestead, my brothers, parents, friends, the backyard. I’ve written about those memories often, on Facebook group pages like Memories of Owego. One of my most popular blogs dealt with the difficulties that I had to deal with when I handed the keys to 420 Front St. to a woman named Lauren. It was one of the hardest things I had to do as an adult. Not the hardest…but it was right up there. The blog’s title was This Old House. Look it up.

The note was undated so I looked closer at the tree. Judging by its size, I would date the photo to sometime in the late ’60s, when I was attending college in Louisiana.

To keep me from being homesick…it was almost laughable. Almost a joke. Of course I was homesick. No photo was going to keep me from feeling so cut off from home, friends, family, and the house, as I was in the mid-sixties.

I appreciate that my mom understood that part of me. That I would feel empty, just a little empty, so far away.

So far away from the homestead…

[The found photograph. Date: ca. late 1960s. Photo was likely taken by my father.]

[The reverse side of the found photo. Photo is mine.]

[Photo of the “Homestead” at 420 Front St. Owego, NY. Taken ca. 2020. Photo is mine.]

I won’t frame my mother’s photo. I’ll just prop it against a book next to my new desk. That way, I can pick it up and read the note. And think about how things were once simpler and more innocent. A needed island of gentle memories in a world of harshness and incivility.