it came up again. and they all started to say how their mothers and fathers were taught here. they lived in the same buildings, on the same halls, studied in the same classrooms. yet i am first generation. i have always been first generation. none of my family lived in my house before me. other families left their roots behind and i came in. ive never lived in one place longer than seven years. never. i never had the deep sense of history and stability that some have had. that feeling of roots and tendrils reaching deep into the soil. i never grew up and watched my house shrink around me. never ran my hands along the same wall i drew on as a child. all of my roots were left behind, buried deep under the new roots of new families.
one time i went to my father's old house. he grew up in upstate new york, on a little farm. and there he told me how his roots were strong here, they were dying, yes, but they had been strong. the area was still known as king's settlement. the road that ran through it was still called by that name, though none of the maps will tell you anything other than the route number. he showed me the creek he grew up playing in, and i wished that i had also grown up playing in it. i wished to feel the weight of my own history, built up, thick and heavy around me. it was thicker there than its ever been. im too used to the lightness of a few years, for i have scattered my years throughout the south. there is little weight when one leaves pieces of oneself under trees and in the corners of forgotten rooms. the nomadic life is one of lightness, and having been trained to this lightness, the nomad often feels out of place when the weight of their past falls upon them. so they move, leaving roots behind.
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