print

The Return to Rome City

Memoir Project Rough Draft

NaNoWrimo Update: November 27, 2005
Current Word Count: 50,885 out of NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000

Writing Update: I did it! I broke the 50,000 mark and did it! I won NaNoWriMo! Even at 50,000 words, the book is only at least a 1/4 of the way written, but I did it, I crossed the NaNoWriMo finish line and I am wiped out. Enjoy the last excerpt and thank you for sharing in my writing adventure. I’ll see you in December with my usual format again. Wahooo!







The Return to Rome City

Lakewood, Ohio. January, 2001. At the club, Cammie and I drank enough beer and I did enough shots to enter into a highly charged emotional conversation that resulted in making plans. And as we all know, with enough alcohol in our bloodstream, the best of friends and total strangers alike will make plans full of bravado and with great intentions, but come the next day, when the sun comes up and the mind is screaming for aspirin and water and greasy food, the plans of the night before, both for the day and for ten years into the future, are absolutely unthinkable and lose all their energy. We all know that promises will not be kept once the alcohol wears off.

I made a promise to myself and Cammie that night in the goth club in the vampire darkness that tomorrow, we would go to Rome City and visit the campus from my youth where I lived with and in the cult, The Way International. Plans with my dad would just have to wait.

And in the morning, the hangover did not stop me. Cammie and I rolled out of bed with just enough time to leave around noon and we departed from Cleveland on the 90 to Rome City, Indiana.

The afternoon waned and it took longer than I expected. The terrain flattened through western Ohio, but started to roll again once we entered Indiana, and the snow covered the ground as it did not in Cleveland. I thought about who might be there and if they would even let me on the grounds and wondered if this trip would be all for nothing but a view from the road, and the sad experience of being kicked our of my childhood home. All the nights I’d woken with dreams of Rome City fresh in my mind and the water tower, for a moment, a shadow through my bedroom window. All the voices calling through the dark corridors of time, beckoning me home to them, I finally was able to listen their voices and I hoped that nothing of ill-fate would happen to us or the car between Cleveland and Rome City. I hoped I would be allowed to at least walk the grounds again, if only for a short time.

At last, the exit off the turnpike drew closer, but I decided to add 30 more minutes to the trip for dramatic effect. We left the turnpike one exit too soon, and headed south, past Rome City, then turned West again and came up through the small town of Kendallville, ten minutes south of Rome City. The campus faced south, and displayed itself like a peacock just as you left Rome City going north and rounded a slight bend. Or so I remembered. And I remembered correctly. I drove and Cammie prepared the camera. I warned her as we passed through the town of Rome City, that after a bend in the road, the campus would appear high above us on a hill and she would need to be ready with the camera. The bend approached, I told her put the camera to her face. We rounded the bend, and as I promised, my old home spread itself out on the hilltop in magnificent display, and I heard the camera shutter go off and Cammie say in awe, “Holy shit.” My home still had the same effect when seen for the first time as it did on me when I saw it as an awestruck 8-year-old boy, stunned at the sight of my new home. And after years of wondering if my home just existed in my dreams and had vanished once I’d left, I felt a surge of love and relief when it appeared on the horizon, blazing in the low angle of the sun, looking glorious, and lonely.

END
© 2005 Christian Cloud Abraham

Posted on November 27, 2005 in
Emotion: Elation, Type: Creative Nonfiction