Going Home

GOING HOME



“You can’t go home again.” What a thought-provoking saying!  Five simple words.  I don’t remember when I first heard it and I think someone actually wrote a song about it.  But, it has taken me a lifetime to figure out what it means and whether it is true or not.



What exactly is Home?  Where exactly is Home?



The first home that I can remember was a wood framed two story - 116 Evergreen Street - in DuBois, Pennsylvania.  I lived there with my mom, my dad and brother, a few houses away from Grandma Rice, two aunts, an uncle, and two cousins.  Grandma and Grandpa Clyde lived across town.  Scores of other cousins, aunts and uncles lived nearby. 



Our family celebrated every holiday together.  Potluck Christmas Eves at Grandma Rice’s house; Easter Sundays, when the parents lined up all the cousins from oldest to youngest, tallest to shortest, for the yearly Kodak moment.  New bonnets, chiffon dresses with hoop skirts, white gloves.  Boys in ties, ill-fitting “kid”suits, and shiny black shoes that were never to be worn again.  (As an adult, I found faded black and white photos of my father and his sisters and brothers, lined up in the same manner, in their Sunday best.) 



Fourth of Julys were the best with gatherings at the camp.  The entire family shared hotdogs and marshmallows roasted over a campfire.  Kids would hike and explore.  Adults would play horseshoes or just visit.  Images embedded in my mind include the old Juke box, the creepy mounted birds protected by glass domes, the rusty coke machine filled with ice cold pop and Budweiser, the outhouse set way off by itself, the color green, the smell of the woods, the crackling campfire.  Years later the camp was vandalized, everything destroyed, all the windows broken.  The land was later sold and developed.  You can’t go home again.



Home was a neighborhood of good Catholic families, lots of kids running wild, 1st and 2nd generation Italian, German, and Polish immigrant families.  The smell of fish and manicotti spiced up the air every Friday.  The summer sounds of Fran Miknis, playing his accordion on his porch or the music of “Polka Party” that burst out of some random radio reminded all that it was Sunday morning.  (I really hate polka music!) Playing baseball, swimming, catching fireflies, and the playground – What a great hometown in which to grow up. Shades of Beaver Cleaver!



We moved when I was eleven.  Our home now belonged to others who were making it their home. I visited the old neighborhood, but it was different. I didn’t belong there anymore.  You can’t go home again.



Our new home was in Big Run, Pa.  There, on Pennsylvania Avenue, is where I grew out of childhood, went to Jr. and Sr. High school, had boyfriends and best friends.  There is where I learned to drive and had my first job.  There is where I met my future husband.  There was the home that I left to go to college and then to marry and move away to Colorado.



This was now my parents’ home, a place that we visited on a yearly basis with our children.  I called it “back home.”  But, going back home is not going home again.  I felt at home, but it wasn’t home.  You can’t go home again.



Going back home meant family and friends, dwindling or fading away, dying or moving on. Going back home exposed the fact that friends who never left home had somehow turned into their parents.  Home changed, or did I? 



Home was the house in which my grandma died when I was 12 years old.  And, my father, when I was 38 years old.  When the time came that my mother decided that this would no longer be her home, my brother and I helped her pack up and move.  Alone, I walked through the empty house for the last time, shutting and locking the door of home.  My mother and I, drove away, not speaking, not looking back, but comprehending.  Finality. You can’t go home again.



Colorado is now home.  We have lived here for 35 years.  Right now, I cannot imagine anywhere else being home.  Here is where we raised our children, watched them get married and experienced the joy of grandchildren.  Here is where we lived our careers, created our history and built a foundation for the future. Here is where we “hang our hat.”  Here is where the heart is.  Here, it is comfortable.  Here is where I belong.  Here is also temporary.



It has taken me a long time to figure out what and where home is: a revelation that has come from a life of living and a lifetime of home.



And, yes, I guess I can go home again. It exists in the memories of my past, in the present of my time, and in the promise of my future.  Past, present, future.  Home.  It is the place where I belong.