To Going Home Again

You can’t. I can’t. No one can.

Thomas Wolfe says so.

Back home, little is like I remember. The house I grew up was sold years ago and has been remodeled. Though it looks similar on the outside, the inside would be unrecognizable to me. Mom, Dad and I drive by it just to see, and for a moment I wish I could go in, but then decide I’d rather not know.

The little shopping center we used to ride our bikes has been taken over by boutiques and restaurants and high end sporting goods and salons. Nice shops, but out of reach for a local teenager looking to spend a little babysitting money. I could go to Skillern’s or across the street to Country Club Pharmacy. They had a lunch counter and milkshakes. And glass shelves filled with White Shoulders perfume bottles and an assortment of powders. Even then, when I was 11 years old and wondering what it would be like to be a grown up, I knew this store wouldn’t be around. This would never last.

So it’s not a surprise, and though the new stuff seems out of place, I know that to the kids who are growing up riding past these houses and stores every day, this is what it’s supposed to look like. What I feel is not nostalgia, not a longing for the past. Not a wish to turn things back.

Going home again is not to see the world as it used to be or to hope that the people I know and love are just like I remember. Going home, I note all the changes. And when I leave, I take back with me, even more clear, a memory of home I never lived in.