Going Home

Here is the script that I wrote for the movie I made while at Tech camp. I might post the movie, too. But the script I can share now.


Going Home
It's been said that you can never go home again. Until this summer, I disagreed. In the most literal sense, I took yearly trips home to Michigan to visit family and friends. In a more figurative sense, it's hard to feel like a grown-up when you are sleeping in your childhood bedroom with the stars still glowing on the walls at night and knowing that your childhood treasures are tucked safely away in the basement.

And this home? It's just down the road from the lake. If you are a true West Coast Michigander, you call it "the lake" or "the big lake". To everyone else, it is Lake Michigan. A crucial part of a lake shore girl's life.

Sitting outside, breathing in the fresh air, the smell of flowers, and feeling the safety and security that comes from the surrounding trees. Knowing the lake was there if I needed it. Those were my trips home in the summer.

But this summer's trip would prove to be different. On this trip I would be packing up my bedroom of 26 years. Saying goodbye to the home in which I spent the majority of my life. I could never go back to this place. Walk through the woods. Spending evenings on the deck, watching birds, cats, and relaxing.

When I got back to Arizona, I glanced through all the pictures that I'd collected over the years.

Pictures of the lake. My lake. With my family at the lake until sundown when I was little. When I was older, it was long days and late nights at the lake. Then introducing my boyfriend to the lake. Showing him the dunes that I climbed as a child. The channel that had the warmest water. The best place to view the sunset.

It was then that I realized that while I was losing my childhood home, I could keep the memories and I would be okay. Because the lake is my guidance, my compass, my constant.

And I can always go home again. Because every time I put my feet in the sand, I am there.

I am home.