you can call me boots.

The day after Christmas, I loaded up a rental car and drove back home, alone. Not Ohio home, but original home: the place that bore me, that contains just over a third of my life’s memories.

I needed to spend the final moments of 2017 being silent and connecting with some filament of the past, but I also wanted to spend that time with my father.

During my trip, I sat there in my childhood room. It’s mostly empty save for a bed, some lamps, a heater and some storage. And while there is sadness here — we live in the kind of world that speeds toward erasure, determined to dissolve the memories we attach to land, the ghosts of my brother and I as children becoming more difficult to conjure — it still is full of light and magic and promise. And love. Of course love.

(Full post on ashleybethard.com)