Michigan

Going back home always brings up some kind of emotion in me. Long ago, as a newly married woman, when I returned home to visit my folks, I felt taken care of and probably reverted back to behaviors I had left behind when I married. I say probably because my husband never mentioned it, but I saw what happened to him when we went to visit his parents and, as my daughter says, "If you spot it, you got it."

When I was a young mother and went home, I was fussed over and the kids were made a big deal of. I felt nurtured by Bessie, my old nanny, and she gave me confidence, which I was often lacking in those days in my parenting skills . As my children grew, my mother's helper, Lena, would watch them while I went off to get sane in the adult world of malls and bookstores. The freedom I felt for those brief hours was priceless.

But then my mother died, and everything changed. When my girls and I went to visit my dad, in his new, smelling like paint house, more often than not we would go out to dinner where we would have to be uncomfortably on our best behavior. I was in foreign territory then, with no ropes to bind me to anything sturdy. But humans are resilient things, and over the years we all worked out positions that were comfortable within our little nuclear world and that were flexible enough to withstand unhappiness and pain as well as love and joy.

And then dad died, and everything changed again. I remarried and inherited a fully functioning family with all that brings with it. And that's where I was last weekend, in Michigan, loved and embraced as if I were blood.