The Road Back Home

There are places that disappear long before they're gone.

The hollow I grew up in is one of them.

If you drove through it today, you probably wouldn't notice much. A few houses tucked between the trees. A creek that still runs the same direction it always has. Gravel roads with more potholes than pavement. Mailboxes leaning sideways like tired old men.

But when I close my eyes, I can still see it exactly as it was.

The hollow sat deep in the hills of southern Ohio, where the roads curved like somebody had dropped a piece of string across the map and decided that was good enough. We didn't live close to town. We lived beyond town. Beyond where the streetlights stopped. Beyond where most people wanted to drive after dark.

Back then, there were children everywhere.

Brothers.

Sisters.

Cousins.

Neighbors who weren't really neighbors because they lived a mile away, but that's close enough when you're raised in the hills.

Nobody called before showing up.

Nobody locked their doors.

And nobody had much money.

What we had was each other.

The adults worked hard and worried harder. Most of them carried the weight of life quietly. Men came home tired. Women stretched groceries further than they should have been able to. Everybody fixed things instead of replacing them because replacing them wasn't an option.

The houses weren't fancy.

Neither were the people.

But there was pride in them.

The kind of pride that comes from surviving things.

The kind of pride that says, "We may not have much, but everything here belongs to us."

I was one of those children who never seemed to stay still.

If there was a creek, I was in it.

If there was a hill, I was climbing it.

If there was trouble, I was probably somewhere nearby.

By twelve years old, I was already driving.

Not legally, of course.

Nobody in the hollow seemed particularly concerned about legal.

My feet barely reached the pedals, but that never stopped me. Someone would toss me the keys and tell me to move a truck, drive down to a neighbor's place, or run back up the road.

Looking back, it's probably terrifying.

Back then, it felt normal.

Most things did.

The smell of cigarette smoke drifting through summer air.

Beer cans sitting in coolers at family cookouts.

Country music crackling through old speakers.

The sound of dogs barking somewhere in the distance.

People today talk about childhood like it was either perfect or terrible.

Mine was neither.

It was real.

There were good days and hard days.

Laughter and arguments.

Celebrations and funerals.

Sometimes all in the same week.

But what I remember most is the feeling.

The feeling of belonging somewhere.

Not because the place was beautiful.

Not because it was easy.

But because it was ours.

The hills held our stories.

Every road had a memory attached to it.

Every porch had witnessed something worth remembering.

Every family carried legends that grew bigger every time they were told.

The older I get, the more I realize how rare that kind of place was.

People leave.

The world changes.

Stores close.

Families scatter.

The roads stay where they are, but somehow everything else shifts around them.

Sometimes I wonder if the hollow misses us too.

If the trees notice the silence.

If the creek wonders where all the children went.

If those old porches remember the voices that once filled them.

Maybe that's why I tell stories now.

Because places die twice.

Once when they change.

And once when nobody remembers them.

So this is me remembering.

The hills.

The gravel roads.

The cigarette smoke.

The laughter.

The noise.

The beautiful mess of people who made me who I am.

A small corner of Ohio that most of the world never knew existed.

And a little girl growing up in the middle of it all, with dirt on her shoes, trouble in her heart, and no idea yet how much she'd spend the rest of her life trying to find her way back home.