You Can't Go Home Again

Not a hero. A fellow traveler.

“Stay angry, little Meg,” Mrs. Whatsit whispered. “You will need all your anger now.”

~A Wrinkle in Time

If you’ve read literature or watched many movies or experienced religion, you’ve likely learned about a Hero’s Journey. Harry Potter. The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. The Odyssey. A Wrinkle in Time.

It’s a recognizable pattern in literature and storytelling. It is also a recognizable pattern in life, especially in contentious times. Especially in times like these. There are 12 steps to the Hero’s Journey, but I don’t need to describe them because many of you have been on a journey for years…just like me.

I went away from home. I learned. I was transformed. I found mentors along the way. I have not returned home with my new sense of justice, however. My journey is not a hero’s journey.

I am not a hero. I did not get to return to my community as the journey requires. In fact, I haven’t been back to my Arkansas home in eight years.

In 2016, I voted for Hillary Clinton and it led to my banishment. My shunning. I have been cast in a role that I can’t quit playing and they can’t forgive me for. A drama without a curtain. A skit that drags on until it is no longer funny and folks turn away in embarrassment.

A journey with no hero. Just a fellow traveler.

I love Arkansas. Especially my part of that state. I lived at the beginning of the Pig Trail — possibly the end of the Pig Trail according to how you look at it. It is called such because the highway will dump you out in Fayetteville. Home of the Razorbacks.

I’m from the Ozark area. Not the Ozark mountains, but the actual town. I was an Ozark Hillbilly. Quite literally…it is the school mascot. Hillbilly pride runs deep. Or so goes the oft repeated quip. It even has a hashtag. #HPRD

I was a child of poverty and divorce and many, many moves. I’ve lived in Louisiana and Mississippi and Oklahoma and Missouri and Arkansas. I can’t remember how many schools I have attended. I didn’t go to kindergarten and was placed in first grade at 4 years old because I could read.

Several of my schools identified me as “gifted” in elementary only to find out that my only talent and gift was in fact reading. Math made me cry and I couldn’t figure out those gifted puzzles to save my life.

Back to reg ed, kid.

I don’t remember the names of my elementary teachers or my middle school teachers and I have vague memories of high school. Trauma. Moves. Loss of memory. I have always wondered in amazement at those who have memories of school and teachers and friends. Always jealous of people who have had the same friends throughout their lives. A childhood friend is unimaginable for me.

But I found a kind-of home when we moved to Arkansas after my freshman year of high school.

Ozark, Arkansas is a small town. The best part of the town is outside of town…heading north on Highway 23 until you get to the Mulberry River. When I was a teenager, this was the only way up to Fayetteville — it was treacherous, but we were young and invincible.

Photo via “Roads to Everywhere” by Karla Ezell Cook

I drove those hills and twists and turns like a bat out of hell.

The highway is known for tree-lined, tree-blind curves. You are simultaneously driving uphill and turning at such a degree that you can neither see over the hill nor what you will meet on the other side. There are few places to stop or pull over and it’s best to just grit your teeth and get to Turner Bend to take a break.

Turner Bend is an old store and much more. It was the place we stopped to get a sandwich and a Coke — they put Miracle Whip on the sandwiches instead of mayonnaise so remember to ask for mustard. The store was a place people stopped to buy a fishing or hunting license.

In the summer, it was filled with folks from out of town, renting canoes and buying beer and matches and wood and bug spray. In the winter, it was full of folks with bloody antlers hanging off their tailgates. If you were lucky enough, and shot a good deer, Turner Bend employees took a polaroid picture with you and your buck and hung it on the wall of the store for everyone to see.

People came back every year to show their kids and grandkids the picture…

As a teenager, I drove north on 23 with my friends to swim Big Eddy in the Mulberry River. The minerals in the river create a blue/green color. It appears turquoise in some places with boulders as big as a house and rapids that will send your canoe on a trip you won’t forget.

I couldn’t actually swim back then, so I always acted like I didn’t want to get my hair wet and tried to stay close to the rocks. I hoped and prayed a boy didn’t throw me in for a laugh and accidently kill me in the process.

We often walked in the river to find a place to sit where the sun could tan our faces and the water would rush over our legs to keep us cool.

Before the drive north, we smuggled out our parent’s beer, or occasionally flirted with a liquor store employee so we could buy the Strawberry Hill we really wanted. We bought Marlboros because no one checked our IDs and someone always had a radio.

We sat on our towels on the rocky creek bed and talked and laughed. Sometimes the boys came with us and sometimes we had the best time with just girlfriends. We smelled like Hawaiian Tropic and MD 20/20. Cigarettes and Sun-In. Youth and audacity.

You can never go back…I can never go back.

Obviously, I can travel back to the Mulberry River. I can drive up and down the Pig Trail as often as I want, but I can’t drive the extra few miles home. I can’t drive up Altus Hill. I can’t drive down the old highway, past the chicken houses, and around the corner. I can’t go home.

The last time I snuck in a drive past my home, it was only slightly transformed.

The trees were larger and the house seemed smaller. The field was unmown but the yard was scalped and sun-burned.

I could see cameras installed on the trees. A huge flag pole with an American flag flying and a bright blue MAGA flag underneath it. It made me so sad, but I can’t say that it was that much different.

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. A journey of its own.

I am much older and much changed and home is much the same with a few small tweaks. A little bit of paranoia, add a bit of Christian nationalism, and a misunderstanding of immigration and the economy and there you have it.

Home is very much what it always was. I am different.

The hills are the same. The river still flows. Turner Bend still stands. The houses look the same. I am the one who went on a journey. I am the one filled with a quest. I am the one who broke away and changed. This is on me.

I can’t go home.

I am angry and I need that anger right now. I can’t go home because I refuse to back down. I refuse to listen to the logic that has been broken since the beginning of time. I refuse the politics of my youth and home.

I am loud. I am the one who refuses to leave politics out of it. I am the one who won’t back down. I am the problem…for them.

I am angry and I need to keep that anger for a while longer.

I can’t be quiet anymore. I have paid a steep price and others look down on me for being willing to pay it — most of my family in fact.

I am not a hero on a journey. I know it and accept it.

I am a fellow traveler.

Solidarity.

~Jess