The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/personal-essay/page/2)
A coin marks a point in time in a way few other artifacts do. My bronze coin isn’t just a piece of metal with a Roman emperor’s face on it – it’s an artifact of his reign, a holdover from that era which testifies to what happened to that point and what might have happened if the contingencies of history had turned out differently.
“What are these pillars, Gramma? Why do they feel so strange?” She stopped on the sidewalk and looked at me over the top of her glasses and said, “You ask strange questions, Sheri Ann.”
The din had been loud inside the house, but outside, I felt like I was being buffeted by it, surrounded on all sides by argument. I felt a guilty weight in the pit of my stomach. I knew what the sound was now. I looked up and without any joy found what I expected to find.
There were exactly two black crows sitting in the branches of my tree, facing my house, yelling at me.
“What do you want?” I sighed. But I knew.
When I was a small child home was simply the house in which I lived. My parents and siblings were there, it held comfortable and familiar material belongings, and most rules and expectations were clearly defined. I was fed and cared for and most of my needs were provided for. I really did not think about how to define home because I did not know anything else. For a time, I just accepted that the environment my parents provided was what home was supposed to be. There is no clear point that I can remember when that began to change but change it did.
There is nothing strange and unapproachable, to me, about the fear of stepping outside my own door. There is nothing more sacred than the relief of coming back. There is nothing more sacred, to me, than the relief of stepping outside my own door. There is nothing strange or unapproachable about the fear of coming back.