Ghost Maps
People who never left home or returned after leaving are probably the luckiest of all. I ran away from home at 17 and only returned for visits. If you stayed in your birthplace or decided to go back to it and root down, you have an umbilical connection that I envy. Blood on the ground. You probably still know the kids you grew up with, and you have Sunday dinner with your extended family. Maybe you go to the same church where you were baptized and saved, and they know your name at the post office and bank. I knew most everyone in the small town where I grew up, and I took for granted the childhood friends, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and large gaggle of cousins that were part of my life. After I left, I lived on both coasts of the country and several states in between. I loved some of those places but knew deep down that I wouldn’t stay in any of them forever. The landscape of marsh, palmetto trees, and Spanish moss in the coastal town I call home now is beautiful but remains foreign to me, like a setting in a movie,
I grew up in a landscape of mysterious dark woods, lush rolling hills and shady creeks, of weathered gray barns that the wind blew through in winter, where hens lay their eggs in hay bales and the high rafters were strung with tobacco sticks of aromatic green leaves.
The landmarks are indelible on the map of lost childhood, but I’ve been gone so long that I can’t find the way back, and I would be out of place if I did. While I was gone, the people I left behind forged other friendships and relationships, and their lives didn’t stand still, frozen in time. Nevertheless, it’s the Eden I abandoned to wander, the place I’ve been seeking all my life, the mythical Kentucky of my soul.
Nikki Hardin is a writer of stories, musings, and memories. Her poetry has been published in Riverteeth Journal. She was the founder and publisher of skirt!, a monthly women’s magazine in Charleston, South Carolina. You can reach her at nikki@thedailynikki.com.