Softer

The moment the nose of my scrappy blue Nissan crossed the state line, my soul exhaled. I didn’t even need to see the “Welcome to Tennessee” sign to know I’d crossed over — the connection I’d always felt with this soulful land snapped back into place, allowing my shoulders to relax and my bones to whisper, finally home.

I’d established residence in a few different states in my lifetime, and spent a few months playing at living in others. Each one had its own draw, left its own tattoo on my heart for different reasons. But only one would I consider home, and now I wondered if I could still call it that after so much had changed.

“I guess we’ll see, huh?” I reached over to scratch Buddy, my loyal Chihuahua boy, behind the ears, smiling over at him as he cracked an eye open to acknowledge me. “You never met Grandma Bea, but you’d have loved her. Everybody did,” I added, even though he probably had no clue who Grandma Bea was or the impact our month-long summer visits had had on me way back when. A hint of guilt ate at the edges of my excitement as I thought about how I’d neglected the house she’d left for me in her will. How I’d let it sit and deteriorate for three years, the same way I’d let myself deteriorate inside my marriage.

Well, not anymore, I promised myself. It had become a sort of mantra.

My marriage sucked the life out of me, but not anymore. My work had become boring, but not anymore. I lost myself for a long time…but not anymore. As though he could hear my inner thoughts, Buddy stretched himself over the cluttered center console and wagged his tail until I nodded, his silent cue that it was okay to cross over and sit in my lap while I drove.

“Just another half hour to , bud. We’re almost there.” Excitement bloomed in my chest, a more pleasant offshoot from the ever-present ache that had taken root since Grandma had passed. I’d read somewhere that you can hold joy and pain at the same time, and so I let myself as often as I could. This move was exactly what Grandma knew I needed, what I should have done the second I got the news.

But it’s never too late to do what’s right for your soul.

The sound of the gravel driveway under my tires was like a shot of espresso straight to my veins — whatever fatigue that had settled into my limbs evaporated, and my fingers played an antsy tune on the steering wheel as I squinted into the night, trying to see details of the small house that defined so much of my childhood. I couldn’t help the grin that pulled at the right side of my mouth as the silhouette of the 70′s ranch style home separated itself from the tree line. The closer I got, the more the light from my headlights revealed the faded red brick and rusted white trellis bolted to the front porch — exactly as I remembered it.

What I hadn’t expected, though, was the recently trimmed grass and perfectly shaped rose bushes in front of the house. Almost as though someone knew I was coming, or perhaps someone had started taking care of it when I failed to show up after Grandma passed. Once again, guilt prickled at the edge of my thoughts, and I flushed thinking about what this stranger might have thought about me — even if they didn’t have a face to think badly about. I let it pass, partially, and thought instead of how nice it was that I didn’t have to worry about the landscaping until I was settled in enough.

“Alright, Buddy, you ready?” Buddy wagged his black tail and vibrated with all the reserved energy from the road trip. With so few houses nearby, I didn’t worry about his harness and instead opened the car door and lowered him down to the gravel driveway. “Don’t go far,” I told him as I grabbed my travel bag and fished the key to the house out of the side pocket, fingering the key chain it came attached to that had a quote about flying free from Toni Morrison — one of my grandma’s favorite writers. I couldn’t help but feel as though giving me the key chain was just another way she was trying to guide me from the afterlife. Nothing Grandma Bea did was an accident.

Just a few steps ahead of me, Buddy had found something to sniff at, and I reached down to pick him up on my way. “There’s plenty of time to explore, bud. I think we should get settled inside before it gets too late, don’t you? Don’t want any coyotes to catch your scent and gobble you up,” I warned him as I scratched under his chin.

My body buzzed with the heady mix of excitement, dread, and bittersweet feelings. There was comfort in seeing my childhood sanctuary after all these years, but also a sadness in knowing that the person who made it feel safest was no longer here to light the path when I needed it most. As I reached forward toward the lock, I couldn’t help but notice that the end of the key moved infinitesimally with my nervousness, and I let out a breath, picturing instead that I was returning to my grandmother’s home as a child, ready for one whole summer of love, adventure, and safety.

“But first, Buddy, let’s shake the dust off our shoes.”