This morning I awoke with a cat on my face. Her fish breath gagged me and overpowered the fresh morning air. Her amber eyes focused on my hair, before she leaned in to chew my bangs. For some reason this cat loves humans, greeting us at the door with as much excitement as a cat can convey – in other words, a miniscule bit of attention. It’s a ruse. She loves us for our hair. It is a mystery why this cat isn’t riddled with gigantic, throat-consuming hairballs. Regardless of her hair-fetish, the cat represents the problems of returning to one’s past. I’ll explain as soon as I quit sneezing.

My childhood is marked by a succession of cats. First there was Toughy, my brother’s Christmas present. Toughy was grey and white-striped and lived up to his name. Un-neutered and always ready for a fight, he lived for a very long time where his longevity was marked by a missing tooth or claw, holes in his ears, and bare patches from his amorous pursuits. Next came Taffy, a lovely cat with no fear and great acrobatic qualities. Her most stupendous feat of daring involved her insistence that she could catch huge geese. We often saw her orange body flying above the grass in the neighboring field as she defied gravity while clamped onto the foot of an airborne goose. But Tyler understood about coming back home. He was a stray (as most of them were). After a couple of years, he ran away from home. Every Thanksgiving, Tyler showed up at the door, walked in like he’d never left and kicked the current permanent resident off its place on the couch. Tyler stayed through the middle of January and then he disappeared until the next year.

It is true that you can’t go home again. Main Street looks the same, minus the train station. My mother’s house has a few improvements, yet it hasn’t altered all that much in 40 years. Even though my father and older brother are dead and my mother is older, there is much here that hasn’t changed. Emotions I’d forgotten about come back in the form of vague feelings of uneasiness. I remember this house as a refuge from the insecurities of my Junior High and High School years. In some ways the only thing that has changed is the cat. Yet, the new cat means everything in this experience. The cat isn’t the same and neither am I.

Perceptions of our childhood guide our reactions to coming home. We all know the high school jock or cheerleader who continues to rule the halls of their high school into adulthood. I am always flummoxed by those people in my life who speak about their childhood, especially their High School and University experiences, as something extraordinary. They search for old classmates on Facebook and connect with people they didn’t think of for decades, falling back into childhood friendships. It seems so odd that out of a lifetime of 60 years, others choose to believe the three or four years of high school (or Junior High or college) were the best years of their lives. Those years marked the most isolating times of my life – more opportunities to not fit into the social groups. I don’t ever want to go back to High School.

There are many advantages to a small town, but a person can be marked or labeled from the first grade on. It isn’t easy to escape your fate, especially if you are shy and a bit naïve about life. Having four brothers and a cop for a father didn’t help much either. I was one of those girls that circled the edge of all the groups. Always invited to parties, I was accepted without being popular. I sang in the choir, played my flute in the band, and even served as the editor of the high school paper. But I don’t remember those years fondly.

HOWEVER easy it is to belittle the high school heroes that haven’t moved on, I am faced with another question. What if my memories of my own angst-filled existence are similar to the former kings and queens’ delusions of grandeur? I’m finding out that maybe the story I’ve written about my own life as an outcast is perhaps just as distorted as the stories told by others who saw their young lives as glittering. I have the advantage here. I’m the new girl in town. People can guess my identity because they know I’m back; they remember me because I answer my mother’s door. Yet I feel guilty for not remembering these people from my past. The most disturbing part is that, just like the cheerleaders, I’m judging people from their actions as children. I met someone just today, a man who I’m sure never knew I existed through most of our school years together. I would never have guessed the man outside the door was that same boy. He was personable and accommodating and complimentary. When I told my mother that an incident in fourth grade was the way I always remembered this man, she told me he would be mortified to know that is his legacy in my mind.

I’m mortified I cannot remember my classmates. I am ashamed I have chosen to lock them in the prison of adolescence and deny them parole, even as they grew into parents and grandparents and experienced both joy and tragedy in their lives. I’m ashamed that I never knew I was considered one of the older unapproachable girls that boys in the class behind me wanted to date. My determination to be an outcast makes me realize I was just as guilty as my seemingly successful peers. I’ve focused so much of my adulthood on proving that I’m better than those I perceived as looking past me.

This place isn’t for me. Even with my awakenings in the forms of a new cat and the end of my long-held perceptions of my childhood, I know I must move on. My life isn’t in the past. But that doesn’t mean I can’t invite people from my past back into my life. The key is to accept or reject them as they are now. Everyone is a product of their experiences and their capacity to learn from errors in judgment. If they are willing to forgive, I can return the favor.

But the cat stays here.

My friends watched me as they listened for the train we had rushed to catch. My uncertainty about my future hit me as I stood facing an already open turnstile in the BART station, wondering if I needed to put my ticket in before walking through it. (The answer is yes, of course, otherwise it messes the ticket up for the exit). At that moment, I was incapable of making any more decisions. Clearly, my friends wondered how I managed to travel through Europe for six months if I could not master BART.

Decisiveness has never been a strength in my personality. In Europe, though, I encountered very little hesitation in my actions. I made quick decisions as I ran for trains when their destinations were unclear. I picked restaurants without analyzing the menus to exhaustion. I took chances and allowed myself to get lost. And most times, even bad decisions worked themselves out to be good decisions. There are two reasons for the purposeful life I led in England. First, I had no travel companion with whom to banter about choices. The second reason had to do with a dream about sparkly, blue flowers on rectangle trees.

Dreams are a useful way for me to work out problems, though I am a bit worried about the dream where I was literally cleaning out Nixon’s kitchen cabinet. I can reproduce detailed descriptions of dreams I had in childhood, like one that involved a whole War of the Worlds scenario and another where I saw Lincoln’s face in my bedroom window. (The penchant for American Presidents is a bit disturbing.) As the trip came together and as I closed up my apartment and quit my job, I began to wonder about doing something so out of character that even many family members and friends did not think I would actually go through with it. I suspect I thought at some level that I would change my mind. About a month before I left, I sorted it out with a dream.

In the dream I was trying to get to a familiar place, but the path was blocked by an immense black hole. There were bushes overgrowing the path around the hole, making it very dangerous to navigate the hole and get to my destination. I decided to change my route, knowing that I would find my way around the abyss and be back in a comfortable place again. Only I did not know where the detour would take me. I followed my bliss by taking Robert Frost’s less-traveled road. That is where I found the rectangle trees dropping blue flowers onto the road. People stopped on the sidewalk and danced in the flowers with me. I watched as the petals fell on me like glitter off a Christmas card. When I woke from the dream, I had no doubts. Thank goodness for that dream. It helped me understand that not all obstacles are permanent impediments. It is possible to get to a desired place in life, even when a black hole blocks the way.

I’m in Nevada now, stopped on my way back to Idaho from another stay in California. I am so lucky to have my loved ones back in my life. I have many people to care for, but there are also many people that want to bring me into their lives, to include me in their homes and activities, and to introduce me to ready-made friends. It is a privilege to be needed – to make a difference in the lives of others. Before I took my amazing journey, I planned to decide on my life’s next destination before I came home. It hasn’t quite worked out as I planned. There are delays in making that decision, as well as less certainty about how I will get to my dream place. I must decide not to decide. Maybe the original detour in my life’s journey was necessary, making it possible for me to be in this place at this time. I wrote about looking for yellow butterflies and searching for pink shirts. Now, I need to trust that I will experience the blue flowers and rectangular trees on my life’s updated route.

Thank you, all my friends and readers, for following my blog and posting comments. Even though I decided to keep the later comments private, I did read them and I appreciate the support you gave me. Your support reinforced my belief that my life is truly blessed. I will continue with my blog, but my focus will change, now that I’m back in the USA. I hope you will continue to read and make comments. And I wish that you all will get to see the blue flowers of your dreams.