A celebration, usually held during the fall football season, when high schools and colleges hold events to welcome former students and alumni who have come back for a visit. Most events usually revolve around current students, especially the homecoming football game, the homecoming bonfire, homecoming dances, etc. The alumni might get to go to dinner together, they might have a dance (playing a lot of old music that hasn't held up well), they might have a reception.

For current students, Homecoming is Prom, Jr.; for alumni, it's nearly always pure disappointment.

Addendum: sekicho says homecoming "generally means that the team is coming home after a series of away games." Well, I'm not so sure about that. I seem to remember homecomings that directly followed home games. But that may indeed where the custom stems from...

A series of novels by Orson Scott Card, depicting the plight of the people of Planet Harmony. It consists of five volumes:

• The Memory of Earth
• The Call of Earth
• The Ships of Earth
• Earthfall
• Earthborn

They're thoroughly good series of books, and come recommended by many people. Including me.

Downstairs
a door swings irreverently
in the cool house.
You two-by-two
all the way up
and the fussy stairs complain
of the way you break the silence.
I find it hard to sympathize
I've been waiting for you
all day.

As if you needed an excuse to get drunker than usual. You were at college, weren't you? What, if any, reason was there to go to college other than to find out what was too much in the world of liquor? William Blake probably was a Phi Delta Epsilon or some such shit. "You never know what is enough until you know what is too much." Yeah. That was exactly the thought I had in my mind as I was pouring rum into my pie hole as fast as the Cherry Seven-Up could carry it down.

That first hard rain usually fell in the morning, followed by a cold front which included a hard, driving wind. That wind was crucial to the effect, which was evidenced by the multicolored leaves blowing hard from their homes. Squirrels would be hastily chewing the rinds from the acorns as they swished their robust tails and watched you take your best girl through the quad to that all-important football game. They might wink, in appreciation of the fact that humans can mate in any season.

Rum can be made to taste just like sugar water with enough Cherry Seven-Up to go along with it. That, however, does not dilute the alcoholic nature of the liquor. I'm sitting in the stands at a famous Southeastern Conference football stadium, and my girl is with me and we're having the afternoon of our lives. The problem is paper cups. I've seemingly poured one too many drops of wax-dissolving alcoholic rum into this cup and it can't be overridden by the soothing qualities of Cherry Seven-Up. Oooops. The bottom of the cup gives up just as Our Team scores a touchdown and we all stand up to cheer. The large man sitting in front of me is not amused as the full contents of my drink spill, violently, from the bottom of my cup onto the very crown of his head.

It wasn't so much the fist in my face that bothered me, because I was pretty much past the point of feeling any pain. It was the fact that my girl saw me just take it and say, "Well, I guess I deserved that," without doing anything about it. You girls can say what you will about pacifism and world peace, but when your man gets hit in the face, you do NOT want him to just admit that he might have had it coming. Do you?

The cool wind blew across the stadium and you could feel the season change right there, even while you were watching. Summer was long gone and there wouldn't be any skinny dipping for quite a while. You might have thought back to your girl laying there by the edge of the creek, naked, while you got another beer out of the cooler. Man, did she look good or what?

As the chilly winds blew across your bruised face and you tried to act like it didn't matter, you caught something out of the corner of your eye. What was that? Oh, yeah. It was the loss of her respect for you.

Homecoming. Yeah, I'm coming home, all right.

Alone.

And they each brought a single memory cupped in stilled hands
and they each voiced a simple song through tears and smiles
and they were as devils and angels that they shone from within
They walked from gold to stone through a land of ash
they walked in ranks extended to time's first breath
they walked ever to the wall and its bitter grey scorn

Here where wings knew no flight because the air was now broken. The dead sky flat and hateful, a colour unnamed and naught but wrong in the stars of their eyes. A death piteous enough to move the darkest soul, the fundament of dreams a rotted corpse above them.

"Has it been so long?" voiced one with hair like happy laughter, and a face kissed by first love. "It has been since the beginning" said his companion with eyes like slow murder, and a voice like blood. "We were not called" said a breeze through tall grass. "No, but yet we came" said a noose pulled tight.

The grey stone was of flowers and spikes, and cold, so cold to strip flame from hearth and pyre alike. A wall of denial absolute, laid across the drab remains of the land and thrust through the heart of the ruined sky. The gathered hosts' only welcome.

They cry "where was our call?" to an empty grave. They whisper "we are so tired" to the weight of the yoke. They rail "our war is at an end!" at eternity's wall. They wait for the welcome that will never come.

"Our purpose was clear", from leering malice. "Yet now is no more", from soft caress. "We will have one yet" says the shield of the righteous. "It shall be this wall" says the cruel knife of ambition.

And like a wave they break upon the wall of flowers and spikes.

Home-com`ing (?), n.

Return home.

Kepeth this child, al be it foul or fayr, And eek my wyf, unto myn hoom-cominge. Chaucer.

 

© Webster 1913.