Joan Gray

Published: December 27th, 2014

My name is Joan Gray and I am currently studying English with a writing minor at the University of Mary-Hardin Baylor in Belton, Texas. I am originally from New Albany, Ohio but my family currently resides in Houston, Texas. My writing inspirations are John Krakauer and Ray Bradbury. I am an avid traveler, writer, poet and people person. I am a dog and family lover and hope to publish a book someday.

Hiraeth

I wish I could feel what it were like to be thirteen again. I was trouble, tight skin, short bones, wide-eyed grins, thin hair; I also was invincible. At thirteen, my hopes and dreams were to become a musician and a writer, to travel the world playing my guitar. Weirdly enough, only the musician part has died in me, the adventurer soul lives on. The summer I was thirteen though, I was finally beginning to sneak out. Not to see boys or to go to parties, I never really hit that stage anyways. I had these jittering fingers, quick feet, and I wanted to write everything, I wanted to see everything.

I would crawl out my second story bedroom window from my top bunk, slide against the plastic edges that dug its way into my thighs, and I would land onto the roof. This was the difficult part to me; the jump from the second story never bothered me. It was that stupid plastic that cut my thighs and I had to place my hands on the roof, using all my upper arm strength to collapse onto it. Once this process was over with, I would sit on the edge of the roof. My feet would dangle, the wind would slide across my cheeks and I’d stay there for a little bit. I’d bask in the view from the top, I had a very large backyard and from up here I just saw life as the playground it was. My tree that I climbed every day since I was six absorbed most of the yard, the play set my father put together was the lovely reminder of what love was, and each laundry line pole represented home plate and second base. This was my world; this was my life on this large piece of land in urban New Albany, Ohio.

I always believed the nostalgic memories of the Ohio air fueled me. It was my home, and I cultivated this world around me to shape that. When I look back, I remember my feet dangling from the edges of the second-story. I remember the tall pine I sat atop, letting my hands collect sticky pine and callouses (ones that never left my hands, burdening them with scars). So when I find myself stressed or lost in this crazy, technologically advanced world I remember my thirteen year old self escaping out my window and out into the nature. I then follow my memories to remember my greatest desires.

I would then jump from the top and land on my feet. Over time, I became weirdly good at absorbing my jumps, not letting it affect my legs or feet. Ironically enough, after all this jumping, I have severe calf problems, shin splints, and the joints in my feet cannot absorb jumps; even from a tiny ledge. So I might have damaged my body along the way, but at thirteen I never thought about what lie ahead. It was always about the next few minutes, I never found myself longing for days neither in the past nor of the days ahead. I only had my dreams of travel but I knew those would happen, I wouldn’t let it absorb my mind. I would glide my feet across the grass, I never wore shoes (except when my parents made me) and I collected mud in between my toes.

Occasionally, my dog Pete would tag along. He was an Australian Shepherd, very obedient and watchful. He was my best friend in the whole wide world. We would make our way to the shed amidst the back yard and grab my rusty bike from the most recent purchases of my mothers garage sale scavenge. My mother was a treasure seeker among junk, and here and there she scored; but occasionally she fanaticized items into something they were not. Pete and I would find our way into the street and bike along the paths the town had developed, it seemed like they created them for me. They created these paths for my bike to make marks on in the middle of the summer heat, for Pete’s wet paws to leave tiny imprints, slowly disappearing as time went on. We would bike so long and so far, sometimes Pete would get too tired of trying to keep up with me we'd have to turn around. Some nights we kept good pace and rode until the sun was rising. I chased that horizon, it was my favorite thing and I chased it endlessly. At thirteen, I used to think that I could reach the horizon. I would think that eventually, I would hit the sun and it’d be beaming at me. It would be this catalytic moment, everything would roll into one and nothing would ever be so beautiful. There would be this cornfield, with the sun bleeding all over the weeds and blending into the sky. And somewhere among this field, somehow – I would be home.

I think now, even at twenty, that I still chase that feeling. I say I chase the horizons but in most cases I chase the feeling of what it would be to feel at peace, to feel at home. Mostly because at this age, maybe it’ll never end, but right now the word home seems vague. It blends into Friendswood, Texas and smears itself away among Athens and Belton and even Italy. Sometimes I fear home does not exist, but inevitably, I chase it anyways.

I’ve touched down in Utah, climbed the mountains of Colorado and the two are similar but fantastic in their own mountain top views. Colorado’s White Water Rafting gave me thrills I have always wanted and Utah holds memory as deep as the bedrock. I’ve walked through Las Vegas and New York, both reminding me this is still a very humanistic world, which we won’t allow it to belong to Nature. I hiked the Swiss Alps; found my way into French towns most would never know. I fell asleep in Italy right when the windbreaks, right when it hit my window so I was no longer sweating buckets in my search for sleep. I hiked through Paris and London; both so rich of history that I could drown in their wealth of knowledge, get lost in their heaps of people – biking and riding subways to their ‘homes’.

Although still, I ride on, pedaling faster at the search for the sunset at thirteen, faster and faster- I ride. I have yet to stop and feel home and whole. I desire it so much it consumes my veins and overgrows the blood coursing its way in and out and in and out again. So I become the midnight bike rider waiting to fly until someday, I know it, I will reach that home. I will feel whole again, I will feel one with the earth and the playground that I know life is. And I won’t stop until I do.