you spend the first part of your life longing to leave, and the rest of it trying to get back.

we’re designed to leave — every chick leaves the nest, every gangly legged foal leaves the shadowy underside of her mother’s teat, every child becomes something new, forming new families, keeping gene pools sufficiently spread, a biological imperative dictating when and how we leave the safety of our parents’ home.

unlike my own boy, who left at 18 and went to the city and never came back, I came back, over and over. my parents were a harbour in a confusing world, their home a place I felt safe and comfortable in. how lucky was I.

in my teenage way, of course I screamed internally that I hated them, that I hated being told what to do, that I wanted to live my own life —

— but then, when it was time to go, I always came back. “you’re messing up the loungeroom,” my Dad would jest, or perhaps not, as he liked the place neat, which appealed to my own sensibilities and contrasted the houses with vinyl records out of their sleeves and wooden bowls of dope and running out of toilet paper and the one guy who used to piss the bed and put his mattress out to dry every morning or staying up all night with a group of friends talking shit under the stars.

yep, the family home was a place I could rest my head.

I never ran away so much as used to sneak out when the house was quiet, sliding one leg through the window, then the other, quietly, quietly, into the adult world with men who probably shouldn’t have accepted teenagers who left their parents’ houses in such a way, and sent me back.

“girl, you’re far too young for this, go home, go home.” you want them to say, not just the ones who wanted you in their bed, but the ones who chopped green with tiny scissors and showed you how to exhale smoke in rings, gandalfian

the temptation of the antithesis of my parents’ home was such a tug.

falling asleep on beaches under the moonlight, joints rolled on CD cases, listening to records, boys with skinny legs and tasting of surfboard resin and salt water, recording cassettes for me when I brought them blank.

me being taped over with a different music to my father’s house.

little chick, feathers growing, longing to launch from the nest, running home and hoping not to be caught, under the stars, the dawn birds chastising

and still — you spend the first part of your life longing to leave, and the rest of it trying to go back.