angela's blog

I've been thinking that it's been awhile since I've been back to Wichita. Not "awhile" per se ... we were there in August for a wedding reception but that was such a whirlwind trip, and such an awkward time where people weren't there, and so busy that I wouldn't have had time to see people if I wanted to anyway. Plus, it seems like every time I go back now it's a battle to make sure that everyone who wants to see me sees me and that everyone I want to see gets seen. But there was always a certain amount of ... certainty that came with visits back to Wichita in the typical holiday season - Thanksgiving, Christmas, you know the kind. After the majority of us went off to college there were certain things that happened when we came home to visit: a night at Danny's house with bad food and a movie and video games, a lunch at Fazoli's with Danny, Charlie, Amanda and whoever else we could scrape up during which we would laugh and laugh and laugh, a night on TL's green couch, often with a movie, sometimes with the dog, and depending on how long the visit was for everyone, often other activities like Taboo, or sometimes we'd get together and go bowling, or just sit around. It's not that I don't have sitting around time here, or that I don't have good friends here. I do. But we don't have traditions and "when we come home" things and places we always go and so on. It seems like no matter how ambitious you are, no matter how much you've wanted to get out of the hometown you grew up in to take on the world, no matter how long you've been gone or how many new people you've met, that first group of true friends that you had ... that's what seems like home. I don't miss Wichita-the-town. But I do miss Wichita-the-people. Who from Wichita wants to go to Fazoli's with me?

Posted by Mrs. Cooper on 1.05.2006 at 1/05/2006 09:55:00 AM | Permalink