Adam Willaerts: Ships off a Rocky Coast (1621)

"One can genuinely never return home again."

Absence was always a prominent part of my Fambly's history, for even when one of my ancestors fulfilled the role of Lair of some Scottish estate, he was frequently away on business. He might have traveled to Belgium or Holland to oversee the transfer of the wool he'd raised or off on some errand for his Lord or King, for most land was held in feudal trust, and the owner paid his rent in service as well as shares of crops, just like his serfs. Throughout most of The Middle Ages, wars raged in nearly endless succession. The Hundred Years War lasted almost three generations and was fought on the continent. English lords and serfs beat a steady path through Calais to battle away with the French, their first and second cousins. Even monarchs volunteered for Crusades, which could take them away from their homeland for years and often forever. It was no sign of sophistication when people traveled, but most often, a sign of simple obligation.

In my generation, my sister and I felt the need to leave our old hometown to create our lives. We always kept the connection, but years gone left the link more tenuous. We more or less successfully transplanted and grew accustomed to occasional phone calls, cards, letters, and the rare in-person visit. Absence eventually makes the heart grow more distant, and one does not necessarily ache for reconnection. Still, one does notice the Absence in passing, often thanks to something particularly annoying about the present location that has nothing in common with where one initially hailed from. "It's not like this there," crosses the absentee's mind.

For most of history, migration proved just as terminal as death. To up and leave, to go pioneering, meant a permanent divorce from friends and family. Certainly, some families attempted to migrate together, and some succeeded, but more often, a young man or couple would head out without expecting ever to return. For most of human history, long-distance communication was essentially non-existent. This meant they would never see or hear from their folks again and that their generation would live without the many benefits of multiple generations living nearby. These days, we can communicate between any two places at any time we choose, but connections almost instantly became tenuous even in my youth. Long-distance phone calls were ruinously expensive and reserved exclusively for reporting deaths. Letters took longer and tended to be infrequent. Visits, when hitchhiking between places, were reserved for only the most critical occasions. Absence, even then, dominated distance.

The reconnecting seemed sweeter for the distance. One naturally loves their family; perhaps we love them a little more with some distance. It was in the Absence that I first brought my birth family into sharp enough contrast to begin to understand and assimilate the experience. I could compare without constant reinforcements impairing my perception. I could consider specific incidents and ponder them toward making actual conclusions. It wasn't until I’d immersed myself in extended Absence that I began to understand where I'd come from. I'll never understand where I'm heading in anything like an equivalent sense.

I cannot imagine how it must have been for my many forebears who just up and left, knowing they would never return. Oh, maybe I can imagine, but I prefer to block the memory of my personal experiences with it. It did not seem permanent at that moment it happened. It always seemed like just another morning when we left. We were up and out early without any overwhelming sense that we were dealing with an irrecoverable. Those neighbors we'd grown accustomed to seeing so often we usually didn't really see them would, after that, be relegated to a memory we would barely register having. The whole sense of place would be permanently displaced, but it seemed no different as we wended away and headed West for a change. We had a fresh Eden in mind, and the anticipation aestheticized the primary experience. We must have left numb. By the time we started regaining our senses, we were lip-deep in a new adventure; the safety and security that had so recently held us no longer an applicable aspiration or experience. We were gone, on permanent Absence for the inhabitants of that abandoned world, but still right here close to our senses.

Evan and Sara never returned to Iowa. Their families there never came to visit out here. They took to inhabiting utterly different worlds. I suppose they exchanged letters, but people rarely visited across their own space/time continuum then. Iowa was Iowa and far, far away. Oregon seemed even farther from there, for those who'd never hazarded the travel from there considered the distance impossible. One invested more than their future when heading toward their Eden at the end of their trail. They paid for their excursion with their past, which would forever remain inaccessible regardless of whether they ever managed to return for a visit. One can genuinely never return home again. Gone has been gone since long, long before any of us ever showed up anywhere.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Fambly, #PureSchmaltz