November 24: "Night Flight," Coming Home, 15-Year-Old Son

Mary Oliver comes home . . .

Night Flight

by:  Mary Oliver

Traveling at thirty thousand feet, we see

How much of earth still lies in wilderness,

Till terminals occur like miracles

To civilize the paralyzing dark.

Buckled for landing to a tilting chair,

I think:  if miracle or accident

Should send us on across the upper air,

How many miles, or nights, or years to go

Before the mind, with its huge ego paling,

Before the heart, all expectation spent,

Should read the meaning of the scene below?

But now already the loved ones gather

Under the dome of welcome, as we glide

Over the final jutting mountainside,

Across the suburbs tangled in their lights,

And settled softly on the earth once more

Rise in the fierce assumption of our lives--

Discarding smoothly, as we disembark,

All thoughts that held us wiser for a moment

Up there alone, in the impartial dark.

Coming home is always like descending from the dark wilderness of the sky into the arms of something, somewhere, or someone familiar as Cheerios.  Here, Oliver flies over the final jutting mountainside, descends toward that dome of welcome where loved ones gather.

I live in a region where wilderness is more common than people, trees more abundant than crowds on Black Friday.  It's really simple to live a hermit's life in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  All you need is a parcel of land, four walls, a roof, and a method of keeping warm.  That's it.  A person with sufficient funds could go shopping once or twice a season and then disappear into the pines.  

However, I do not live a hermit's life.  In fact, my jobs require me to be social.  Some days, this requirement is easier to accomplish than others.  Don't misunderstand me:  I love my friends and family.  They bring me joy and happiness.  However, the poet side of me would prefer to sit in my office at home, writing and avoiding human contact.  Given the chance, I could easily pull an Emily Dickinson and disappear into my bedroom.  Just knock three times and leave food outside my door.  Then leave.

I now live with a moody, 15-year-old boy who is about as antisocial as polite society allows.  When forced, he can almost be friendly and pleasant.  At home, however, he's unpredictable.  A hurricane that keeps switching course.  When I call up the stairs to his bedroom to tell him dinner is ready or an asteroid is going to crash into the planet causing an extinction event, I may get a sweetly smartass comment.  Or he may go full-on Joan Crawford with wire hangars on me.  He's Howard Hughes without the money living in my attic.

Now, I was 15-years-old once.  I get the weirdness of being at that awkward stage of life--viciously self-centered and viciously self-conscious.  Worried about what everyone thinks and says.  It's a terrible time.  And, of course, as with all 15-year-olds, they take it out on those who love them most.  Parents.  Sometimes siblings.  Safe people.

And that's what homecoming is all about.  After being out in the world, surrounded by people who may or may not care about you, in places that you may or may not like, doing jobs that may or may not be fulfilling, you return to home base, like you used to do when playing tag or hide-and-seek as a kid.  And you're safe from all the meanness outside the front door.  With safe people who love you whether you act like Saint Francis of Assisi or a temperamental, hormonal teenager.

The moon is trapped in the branches of a tree in my backyard tonight.  My son is screaming at friends he's playing games with on his computer.  My puppy is sleeping in her crate.  My wife just went to bed.  And I'm writing in my office, listening to the house slowly settle down for a long, late-November sleep.

Saint Marty is home.