"A Homecoming"

Memoirs of a young man.

        My evening in Crestline, Ohio ended with a nice bit of nostalgic sentiment. I was in town to give a talk to a group of people about a problem we all shared.
           
          Being in Crestline was nothing new to me. I had previously lived there for six years. I had attended St.Joseph's Catholic school for the first six grades before my family moved to a small neighboring town.

            Growing up in Crestline was really a pleasant experience. Being made of youth and innocence, my mind and lifestyle reflected honesty and goodness with a touch of mischief. I appreciated life without giving it much thought. Not having my homework finished was about the only thing I had to fear in life.

          Most of my time was spent exploring rippling creeks and the treasures of its muddy bed. I strengthened my throwing arm by skipping stones at country fishing holes. Catching unsuspecting frogs sharpened my quickness and reflexes.
        
          I skinned my knees and elbows on the brick laid streets while I rollicked away on my bicycle. I became an acute student of the rules and skills of sports. I learned how to shoot and cheat at marbles and then the necessity to argue that I hadn't cheated but that is how we played at the other kids backyard.

          Those years taught me how to make fun of a girl in front of a group of guys and and be able to tell the same girl how pretty she was when no one else was around.

          More of the fascinations of life presented themselves during  those growing years. Later I came to yearn for that special time as the long days of adolescence turned into the fast years of adulthood.

           The freshness of learning turned stale. Honesty and innocence evaporated slowly, eventually draining a once full well. The enthusiasm of life was traded for the guilt and remorse of drinking.

            No longer were tennis shoes covered with dust from spending endless summer days on ball diamonds. Bright summer days were not turned into cool relaxing evenings while peacefully fishing. The anticipation of getting up early and spending all day with your buddies no longer existed. The naturalness of being content with oneself dried up. All that was left was a hunger for cleanliness.

             My evenings became full of sitting in bars drinking while the mornings labored with the suffering of recovery. The tender feelings that bonded me with my Creator were stripped away. My woods,creeks and ball fields became bar rooms and taverns. I was now only faithful to one thing, the bottle.

               From a bar stool I was alienated from nature. I became a prisoner of reeking smells and filth. My mind was filled with frustration and hopelessness. The butterfly had returned to the cocoon and came back as a diseased snake. Everything that was pure was now black. Nothing shined.

               The refection of God's Image in my soul was blank. Only the painful hunger for that reflection existed. Within that hunger a small speck of hope lay. The last bit of true life I owned. If somehow it was nurtured, it may be able to break through the darkness.

                 Pleading prayers and a desperate will brought a rescuing calvary to my aid. People like myself who had tasted that foul scum and were now free, gently picked me up. They carried me to spiritual fountain which cleansed me. These soldiers of mercy instilled a strength of purity to my tired bones. The marrow of goodness began to flow again. I could look at God with crystal clear eyes and talk to Him with gratitude.

                 The sickness was going away. I was no longer a caged animal but a decent human being again. I could taste life once more. The only debt I had to pay was to share the knowledge of freedom to those who were still prisoner. To give away what was given to me.

                 This was the reason I was speaking in Crestline tonight. To spread the message that there are keys to open those dungeon doors. Tools to build foundations of sobriety. And a Higher Power to make it all possible.

                I gave my talk in the basement of a church. I turned my thoughts and words over to God. For it is in His presence that healing takes place. When I had completed my message I felt refreshed.

               Leaving the church I crossed the street still laid with bricks to where my truck was parked. Then it hit me. My truck was parked in front of where our old house once stood. a new apartment complex was there now.

               My eyes immediately visioned our two story house with the full stone front porch. Beautiful woodwork with thick double doors of heavy oak. That house had heard our laughter and contained our tears. Its rooms had felt my brother and sister take their first steps. It had heard my prayers and protected me as I dreamed in bed. It was gone from the street but it stood strong in my heart.

               Slowly I reached down and touched the wet grass and felt the cool earth beneath it. It was like shaking hands with an old friend. With the dew and dirt on my finger tips I slowly blessed myself.

               It was good to truly be home again.
        

Reviews

[Great Aunt Astri]

I like that ... coming home to your childhood home, and coming home to your heart's centre. I think you have written this story very well. It is clearly written with descriptive details in long and short sentences. Nothing wrong with grammar, spelling, repetition etc. and it held my attention. And there is the 'teaching' point. It is always so reassuring when one hears of someone changing 'bad' ways for 'good' ones.

[richieb]

Thank you for your sound review. Your words are inspiring.
Blessings,read more Thank you for your sound review. Your words are inspiring.
Blessings,
Richie b.

[Great Aunt Astri]

You are welcome

[Hailey Juliet]

This was a nice piece, I enjoyed reading about the journey that was described in it and your descriptions were vivid. I enjoyed the message of the piece about redemption and rebirth; rediscovering a childlike perspective of the world. I particularly enjoyed this bit:

Slowly I reached down and touched the wet grass and felt the cool earth beneath it. It was like shaking hands with an old friend. With the dew and dirt on my finger tips I slowly blessed myself.

Wonderful description and a beautiful image. Sincerely, well done!

[richieb]

Thank you Hailey for reading this story. As writers we are sometimes blessed to be very aware of the moment and our surroundings. When we are able to translate that moment onto paper it becomes some of our best writing.

[Hailey Juliet]

Absolutely well said! You are most welcome:)

[FoxgloveLove]

This is quite a lovely, sentimental piece. It's carefully written and filled with rich and vivid emotional imagery. I can tell that you put a decent amount of thought into this, and it turned out very well.

There were only a few spelling and grammatical errors I noticed, but that can easily be fixed with a quick proofread. You seem to have a good handle on grammar and syntax, since nothing I saw was consistently incorrect, so I won't bother spending any time on that.

From your writing, I'd say that you're probably a fairly experienced writer, so in this review I'd mostly like to focus on some structure and style, as well as some of the content.


---Structure & Style---

This is a rather short piece with a simple message, so overall it does a fine job of delivering the message I imagine you wanted to express. Normally, I would recommend that your paragraphs be a little longer, since a lot of shorter paragraphs can make it difficult to help your thoughts flow together, but because of the brevity of this particular piece I would consider it reasonable as a stylistic choice to utilize short paragraphs. It's just something to think about as you're writing.

On that note, however, as a piece that seems like it should contain a lot of emotions and nostalgia, it almost seems a little too short to fully savor it. You do include a lot of various imagery, but you don't dwell on any of it for much more than a sentence or two. I personally feel that you could improve this piece by trying to use that nostalgic imagery to your advantage and go into a little more detail. Your strategy is to collect the emotions an individual might find in mundane objects and scenes, but your pacing seems just a little too quick to fully appreciate it as a reader (i.e. someone who is not you, the writer, who is familiar with this imagery). There's no need to spend a full page describing a single scene or object, but sometimes it really pays to try to slow down and take the time to go into a little more focus on something that may seem mundane but holds great emotional significance to the character so that the reader can understand that this "mundane" thing is not mundane at all.

A quick analysis of this piece shows that there are three parts to this piece (aside from your brief introduction): the "playful youth" stage, the "breakdown" stage, and the "rebuild" stage. This is a great structure for such a piece, since it allows you to develop the main character's mental and emotional maturity in full. The only issue is that, while you have these very distinct stages laid out in your writing, there is almost no transition between these stages.

I was honestly a bit confused when you spent multiple paragraphs writing about all the wonderful, innocent scenes of youth, and then with almost no warning suddenly things have "turned stale." I think this is one of the major disadvantages of choosing to make this such a short piece, since you take little time to show how things actually go from flowers and sunshine to drinking the days away at a bar. Setting aside the actual content for now (which I'll talk about below), I think you should add at least one paragraph between the stages of your story to provide some sort of in-between to bridge the gap between these highly-contrasted emotional phases.

Lastly, in terms of style and structure, while I did like the story once I got to the end, I felt that your introduction was a little weak. Having a little mystery is good, but it was very difficult to tell exactly what this story was supposed to be about until I had practically finished it. As I said before, I feel like you should try to slow your pacing a little bit and take some more time to set up this piece in your intro before moving into the description of the character's youth. I felt your conclusion was very well done, since you seemed to spend a little more time and focus on tying the entire piece together, so consider trying to do so as well with your opening so that you can get the reader interested in reading this piece. Were it not as short as it was, I feel like it might be a little difficult for the reader to immerse themselves into the world of your character.


---Content---

This part is going to be a little more to do with my personal preference in writing, but I feel it's worth mentioning all the same, so take it for what it's worth. This work seems like it is meant to be very emotional, yet there really isn't that much emotion in it. Stylistically, you could use this as a rhetorical avenue to try to evoke emotion through such lack of emotional content or simply through your imagery. However, while I can tell you put a lot of thought into the message of this story, I feel like the writing in some places was a little lacking in depth or complexity. This in itself isn't a bad thing, but it's a little bit harder to pull off a complex emotional piece with a simpler style.

While your writing ranges from simple to eloquent in some places (which does make for great contrast through the stages of your story), it doesn't seem like it was entirely planned out throughout the piece. Writing from your emotions is good, but planning out the way you're going to write your work, either beforehand or afterward, will help you get the most out of the potential in your writing. Again, I should stress this is only my personal preference, so I would understand if you decided to disregard it. I just feel like it's something to keep in mind for your future writing.

I would also consider adding more detail in terms of what your character might have gone through that lead to certain behaviors. The best example I can think of is, how and why did your character start drinking so much? Maybe it started as a fun thing to do in high school and just became a habit/addiction. Maybe something bad happened that drove the character to start drinking more. Even if you don't dwell too much on it, a sentence or two would help clarify this (and other things), since it just doesn't make sense for a character to inexplicably trade all their youthful innocent for a bottle of liquor. If you read through your story again, just ask yourself, "Will the reader understand why the main character decided to do this?"


- Rating -
Grammar: 19/20
Structure: 16/20
Style: 14/20
Language: 17/20
Appeal: 15/20
----------------------
Overall: 81/100

Good work! Keep practicing your writing, but maybe consider focusing more on analyzing and reviewing other people's works thoroughly so you can see a diverse range of writing styles and find things that you do or don't like that you can take home as lessons for your own writing.

[richieb]

Thank you for the thorough review. You have given me much to think about in future writings. I came to this web sight to learn and improve. I appreciate and respect your comments. I hope to continue to work with you.
Blessings,
Richie.

[Hannah]

This is well written. I really like it. Congratulations with it all.

[richieb]

Thank you for reading this story. I am glad you liked it. Looking forward to reading your next work.

[Jacob Clifford]

Very nice piece, Richie. It is nostalgic throughout, in a happy yet reminiscent way in the beginning, and then regretful and bitter later on. It ends in a beautiful manor and concludes the passage quite nicely.

[richieb]

Thank you for reading my story Clifford. This happened about 32 years ago. I will have been sober for 35 tears in November through the Grace of God.

[Richard Patrick]

great work, thank for asking me to read it. I enjoyed it emmensely. I hope your day is going well. I must apologize for not getting to read it sooner. Keep it coming lad.

[richieb]

Richard, thank you for the review. I am glad you enjoyed it.

[Richard Patrick]

Thank you for writing it. I have more chapters on the ghost of the sword.

[richieb]

I will be sure to read your new work. Your story well written.

[Richard Patrick]

Thank you.

[Long Whispers]

This is beautifully written. Loved it! Good job!

[Valentine]

I moved back to Michigan when my husband passed and find it the opposite. At times I deeply regret going back after so many are gone. Valentine

[richieb]

Valentine, sorry to hear about your husbands passing. I don't blame you for feeling this way. We all have good and hurt feelings about the past. Thank you for reading.
Richie

[TL Boehm]

At first I wondered about the back story the relevance of it even though it was well told, but you got to it and it made sense. It is a beautiful gentle story tugs the heart a bit but isn't too preachy - the end especially - feeling the grass - coming home - wrapped the piece up so nicely

[richieb]

Thank you Tl, I appreciate your comments. Positive reviews from accomplished writers as yourself gives me inspiration. When you have been a factory worker for over 35 years"it don't come easy".

[Will Neill]

Well Richie, what can I say! a nice piece, your prose reminds me of David Foster Wallace one of my favourite authors.
Will

[richieb]

Thank you Will, I really appreciate your comments. You and Barleygirl have pushed me in the right direction. Thank you for putting up with me.
Richie

[barleygirl]

This is far & away the best thing I've read of yours, so far! Excellent writing, perfect flow & clarity, just enuf time spent explaining the various stages of life, packed with imagery & feeling. Plus, I love it when a story comes back around full circle to explain the opening sentiments. Altho I've never had to battle with the bottle, I've always been sympathetic to those who have, so I love the tones of compassion thru-out. I also love the references to God & spirituality -- just enuf to let us know about the healing foundation of this journey, but not so much as to put off those who aren't of the same beliefs. This is a story that appeals to people from all walks of life.

[richieb]

Thank you for your favorable review. Upon improvements in my writing I owe you and some others credit for steering me in the right direction. They say write what you know and this has been part of my journey.

[hcarson]

Wow.. I loved this...it feels very real but real or fictional it loved its easy flow, wonderful discriptions that brought the boys childhood to life, a childhood many can relate to in their own parts of the world but are all eassentially the same...sadly..the decline into adulthood and alcohol as well..i liked the metaphor of the butterfly coming back as a diseased snake, lovely expressionism. So glad he managed to beat his demons, so many don't..and the ending was just perfect!! Well done, full marks!

[richieb]

So glad you enjoyed this piece. Thank you for the kind words. Some times a story flows from your mind right to the paper. I guess it wouldn't be such a challenge if it worked that way all the time.

[hcarson]

I also wish it did..i have had nothing to add to site for awhile as mind blank or i hate what i do manage to write, hopefully it will pass and i will come up with something half as good as this, that would do ke fine lol

[richieb]

We all go through periods of frustration, hitting on a good story always gives us incentive to keep trying. I know you have a lot of good stories in you. When you least expect it it will flow.
Richie