The Long Journey Home

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This is my entry into The Ink Well Prompt #38: family ties. See the contest post here and stop by to make your own entry or just read some great stories by the talented community members of The Ink Well!

The Long Journey Home

The rain sluiced down in waves and the windshield wipers beat a frantic staccato trying to keep up. Of course, it would rain today, of all days.

Nervous bile rumbled in her stomach as she peered through the foggy condensed window to find the correct parking lot. Such a momentous occasion with feelings of joy and anxiety combined in equal measures.

Six long years since she had laid eyes on her firstborn. Letters and phone calls were appreciated but he had refused to let her visit. He said it was because he couldn’t stand the thought of her seeing him here. And the loneliness and homesickness would just be worse after she left.

She guessed she could understand that but the mother in her had a mad desire to make sure that he really was okay. Who knew what was happening in this dark place? He certainly wouldn’t tell her even if things were going badly. Nightmares visited her in which he called out her name, beaten and bloody, alone and hurting. But no time for that now. It was over. He was coming home.

There he was! Wearing the jeans and hoody that she had boxed up and sent him for his release date. Look at that beard, it was almost a foot long. But when he looked up from under the hood she could see those bright blue eyes that she had fallen in love with the moment he was first put in her arms thirty-three years ago. The past six years had left their mark though with a pattern of new wrinkles and a look of hardness that had not been there before.

In the past she had thought it was rough, waiting for him to come home safely from Iraq during those years of combat. But that was a walk in the park compared to waiting out these years of incarceration with him facing a whole different type of danger. The war years had affected him in obvious, and some not so obvious ways, what would this have done to him? Who was walking out to meet her today?

On the other side of that coin she knew that if he had not ended up here, paying for his mistakes, he more than likely would have ended up in an unmarked grave somewhere, victim to his drug addiction. It seems that a college graduate military veteran did not make a very good criminal. After six years the addiction would be gone but what about the torments that led to the addiction in the first place?

The passenger door opened and he folded his six-foot-five frame into the car beside her. Tears came to both their eyes as they hugged. And hugged. And hugged.

“Mom, you don’t know what this means to me. To have had you stand by me all this time. To believe in me and the fact that I want to change my life now. To have you here and know you’ve got my back. There were tons of guys in here who had no one on the outside who cared. Those weekly calls, the books you sent, the money for the commissary were literally the only things that made this tolerable.”

She wiped her eyes and took him by the shoulders. A long soul searching look passed between them. She had heard his declarations of good intentions and had heard the sincerity in his voice. He pledged to become the kind of man she could be proud of. To be a good father to his two children who would not even likely remember his face at this point. Whom he missed so badly that he spent hours gazing at the pictures she had sent him. She’d heard the regret in his voice as he talked about the things he was missing as they spent their first years without him.

“Son, you are family. I love you with all my heart and always will. Everyone makes mistakes and is entitled to make up for them, learn from them, and move on. Today is the start of the rest of your life. Only you can determine what to make of it. And keep in mind, we’re talking tough love from here on out. There will be no enabling of you going backward. I’ll help you every way I can but it’s up to you now to make the right choices.”

She put the car into gear and they pulled out of the parking lot, the rain finally ceasing and the sun peeking through the clouds.

She sent up a prayer as those first miles rolled by, the start of his long journey home.

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