Quest

Somewhere, somewhere, inside me there is a home I’m searching for…perhaps not searching for but more like one that is calling me…it isn’t the home of my youth…it isn’t any place I’ve ever lived…but damn, somewhere is nagging at me…at least I think it is home…might be something else…ancestorial perhaps…that is probably closer to what I mean than what we consider “home” to be…but I reckon that is about as home as one can get…it’s almost a primitive calling…
something from way, way long ago…some sort of connection pulling at me…keeping me unsettled…it may be some sort of belonging…something nagging at me to get with those I should be with…not immediate family, you know, not mother, father, sister, brother sort of family…a larger, older family…one I don’t know, or at least am not aware of…I guess the closest I can come to describing it is much like the gypsies I met in Austria in a camp ground years ago…a large extended family…probably twenty or so caravans…but they are connected to an older heritage, an older family…in many ways I feel as if the old ways are pulling at me…I just don’t know what those old ways are, or even mean…perhaps that is the cost of our society…a loss of foundation…my father spoke Italian, which was spoken in his family since his parents came from Italy…he didn’t teach us Italian…although it wasn’t spoken of, I learned much later that he wanted us to be Americans…although he didn’t experience the poverty of his parents and grandparents (who all came over together), he certainly must have learned of it…his family wasn’t rich but knew opportunity…he also lived through the Depression as a young man…and me, I’m not half Italian, I’m full American…how can I be otherwise?...both my parents were born in this country…I am my environment…I didn’t grow up with “When I was your age…” or “Back in the old country…”…hell, the old country was poverty and the lack of opportunity…why would anyone wish to return to that?…but yet there must have been a connection…an ancient connection of generation upon generation…a common grounding of the soul…a knowledge of the ancient ways…a knowledge now lost so as to provide for immediate needs…to stay alive…they’re all gone now, and have been for many, many years…the old ones…the immigrants…the first generation born here who surely heard the stories…the ones who could possibly let me know what is nagging somewhere inside me trying to have me remember that which I never learned…working on a family tree would do no good…poor people have no genealogy…hell, neither do rich people…I read once that there are only three or four families in England that can trace their family back to 1066 with any certainty…and none beyond that…so I sit and think often about what may be calling me…to ask why would be a waste of time…that can be asked once the first answer is found…I wrote a poem (a poor one) many years ago about wanting the ancient gods of my fathers to be returned to me…I think that was the beginning of my quest…a quest unacknowledged at the time…a poem I didn’t think about writing but one that just appeared across my screen…the first whisper...once I was asked why I was asking for the ancient gods to be returned to me, why didn’t I just embrace them…I had no answer for that question then…but perhaps that was the question to be asked…why don’t I?...I’m not certain…maybe because I’m not certain what to embrace…I could certainly research the ancient gods from the area my family came from, however, something tells me that isn’t the area I should be searching...I’m not even certain it is the ancient gods I am looking for…in fact I doubt it is, but they may in some way be connected to this quest…not an end of the quest, but rather a marker as this quest has never felt like a search for the supernatural…quite the opposite…more of a quest for the tangible…my true home.