Gone home notes1/8/2024 Through each one I hear her gradually arriving home not physically but emotionally. The story my sister is unfurling through her diary entries becomes a tentative exploration of first love and I'm unsure as to whether I should be reading it even though all the entries are addressed to me. I drive from place to place accumulating the impact of the thousand minor disappointments and triumphs the abrasions of daily life. My brother's academic work, my father's travels, my mother and my sister's involvement with the baby. I sit in the car and absorb slices of conversation, my family's life gradually easing into focus. My mother - frustration, distraction, resolution. My father - success, rejection, the glimmering embers of a career which may yet reignite. My sister - unhappiness, isolation, connection. I move methodically from room to room, my family's life gradually being revealed to me in bursts. I can see my sister in the brightly-lit front room pacing with her daughter, chatting singsong nonsense. I sidestep the key problem as my mother is home and rushes to the front door to let me in. I find the key under a tacky but well-loved Christmas duck ornament and let myself in. I haven't been away long but in the time since we last saw each other her baby daughter has begun to crystallise from a warm wiggling morass of need into a tiny person. ![]() I am looking forward to seeing my sister. She's changed schools and must have made new friends or lost older ones. I've sent back postcards picking out the cool things I've seen that she might want to share in somehow but missed out on the everyday and the mundane. I've been away for a long time and wonder how much has changed.
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