Homecoming

In the course of building a media empire, it’s important to take pause every so often to reconnect with one’s roots. Too often, we get caught in the never-ending train of day-to-day tasks and lose track of how quickly time is passing. This is especially true if the course of life moves you to a different part of the country than your family.

I believe this is one of the key jobs mothers have as their children get older: to remind us of the passage of time, specifically in relation to Things We Haven’t Done. Allow me to provide an example: Since moving to Cleveland eight years ago, my journeys back to my hometown in Pennsylvania have been proportional to how much spare time I had available to make the trip. These were fairly regular the first year I was here, but as the years went on and I took on more responsibilities (especially after we ditched apartment life and bought a house), there just isn’t the time for me to go back all that often. This year, between handling the waves of upheaval at my day job and my responsibilities at Rivalcast, those free weekends have been practically nonexistent.

As I am reminded on a regular basis.

So last weekend, enticed by the promise of clear skies for the Super Blood Moon eclipse (amazing, by the way), the recent Sasquatch sighting reports sent by my aunt, and the latest wave of guilt sent by my mother, I made the trek back to the mountains. It was a perfect fall day, punctuated by the squeals of delight from my young niece and nephew (who, I’m proud to report, were excited to be looking for Sasquatch and vanquishing the agents of Arachnos lurking in Grammy’s backyard). Something about being in the woods just settles my soul, and this was no exception. Things are simpler out there. Fall, and really any season in the city, is a constant bustle of seasonal house projects, social engagements, and prep work for the next big thing. Fall at my mom’s cabin means splitting wood for the winter, gathering hickory nuts, and taking the kids for walks in an increasingly colorful world. In short, fall days off at home are spent clearing cobwebs and dust out of the house. Fall days in the woods are spent clearing cobwebs and dust out of the soul.

This wasn’t to say I’d completely disconnected. I still had writing to do late in the night after the rest of the household had gone to bed (at the super-late hour of 11:30 in the evening – another stark contrast to city life). I still had internet connection to quietly catch up with my team while my family slept. Much to my mother’s chagrin, I also had a little bit of cell signal so that I could still deal with emergencies that cropped up. Because as nice as it is to get away for a little while, as I mentioned at the beginning, time still passes. Things still need dealing with, articles still need edited, networking emails still need to be sent. The world doesn’t take a break just because you do, and that’s sometimes hard for people around you to understand.

And that can be difficult sometimes. My mother is generally supportive of the projects I undertake, even if she doesn’t always understand why I do them – her goal for her children was to give us the skills necessary to make our own opportunities in life and follow our own passions, wherever that led (so long as it didn’t lead to England, which is entirely too complicated an argument to get into here). Still, she didn’t get why I needed to break away for ten minutes to shoot an email off from my phone that dealt with a serious decision on my team. She didn’t understand why I stay up into the wee hours of the morning to make writing deadlines that I and (at this stage of the game) no one at RivalCast get paid for. As I explained the issue that required my ducking out on her for ten precious minutes, even if she didn’t say it, I could tell she didn’t get why we were so willing to take a chance and put ourselves out there, so vulnerable to the world, when there was no guarantee of success.

That’s the other part of a mother’s role as her children become adults: worrying about all the what-ifs they think we aren’t aware of.

This isn’t to say either of us is wrong in our thinking. I’ve written in past articles about how life changed for me when I woke up on my thirtieth birthday realizing that life was going to be as interesting as I decided to make it, and that there’s something insanely empowering about the idea that your generation is the one currently in charge. One look around my mother’s cabin will tell you that she’s to the point in life where comfort is her main goal – not quite to retirement age, but staring it down like she would a bear coming too close to her kids. She’s fought her battles in life, raised her kids, put in her work hours, and now is just looking to enjoy her time off feeding her grandchildren insane amounts of sugary treats without her daughter’s cell phone pinging every twenty minutes.

It really just comes down to a matter of where one is in life, and that changes over time. She wants to take it easy and enjoy the time that is racing by faster every year; I need to pack as much into it as I can. I’m seeing and accepting of the fact that one has to sometimes take big chances in order to reap big rewards; she’s fretting over creepy people harassing her daughter over the internet. She’s past the point of empire-building; I’m just getting started.

Through all of it, my grandmother just sits back and laughs at both of us. She, probably more than either of the immediately involved parties, gets exactly what is going on. Nearing eighty, she’s been in both positions herself, and knows what it’s like to have a headstrong daughter – my mother – out to conquer the world. She tells my mother to leave me be, and she tells me to leave my phone. Arachnos, it seems, is lurking in the woodpile, and the children need my help.

I am happy to oblige.