Coming home after years away

I left my village at eighteen, certain that I would not miss it. I was wrong, but I needed twelve years away to admit it. The drive back was unremarkable. The motorway looked the same as ever, the petrol station near the exit still sold the same chocolate biscuits, and the road to the village still bent through the same olive trees. The unfamiliar part started when I arrived. My grandparents' old house, which I had remembered as enormous, turned out to be small and slightly shabby. The square where we used to play football had been resurfaced and now had three benches that hadn't been there before. The bakery had closed. The owners had retired to the coast. Most of my school friends had moved away, but a few were still around. We met for a beer that first evening. The conversation was odd at first. We had spent twelve years building completely different lives, and the easy old jokes no longer landed properly. But after the second beer, something familiar returned, and by the end of the night, we were laughing again. I will not pretend the village is perfect. It is small, it is quiet, and there are no easy answers to the question of what young people are supposed to do here. But it is part of me in a way that I had underestimated. Sometimes you only understand what something means after you leave it.