Can't Go Home

There's an old saying that you can never go home again. I've heard it most of my life, but I never really believed it. Until I tried to do it earlier this fall.

To me, home is where your family and friends are, preferably in a location familiar to you from your childhood. As my parents, grandparents and other family members passed, I lost that contact with those familiar faces and places. Maybe it was my age, maybe it was that lost connection with my childhood, but more and more, I started remembering the small town where I grew up, the friends I had, the classmates I shared so many years with. Where were they, what were they doing? I drooled over remembered pastries from the bakery on Main Street, wondered if the school system still served peanut butter sandwiches on Fridays. I didn't realize I was romanticizing my childhood.

Earlier this fall, I had a chance to return to that town for a class reunion. It was culture shock. The highway that used to go through town now veered around. Both trucks stops – one on either end of the town – where my mother and sister used to work were gone, replaced by simple gas stations, fast food joints and pizza places. Main Street was mostly unrecognizable, because a tornado had torn through about 15 years ago, and most of the buildings had to be replaced. The only piece that was recognizable was the theater, but it operated only on the weekend, rather than all week.

When I actually got together with a number of those classmates, I reverted to the shy wallflower I had been in school. I did okay when I could talk to one or two people, but most of them concentrated on conversing with larger numbers, to get the most ground covered, I suppose. And I'm not sure, but I only remember one of them as still living in that town. Some of them recognized me, even after all these years. Strangely, the ones I remembered the most strongly barely remembered me.

The house I grew up in looked ready to fall to the ground.

That wasn't home anymore. Like me, 'home' had changed.