There is a cliche that you "Can't Go Home Again." Leaving home, go away to college, move two states away, find a job, start a new life. But then, coming home, returning to the old town I grew up in, always felt like re-charging, reconnecting, refreshing. Although with each passing year, the old home town as I remember it fades away more and more, and the new city become less and less recognizable to me.
In my mind, and in my dreams it's still the same. I imagine bumping into old high school crushes, reconnecting with old high school buddies, and inadvertently crossing paths with bitter high school enemies. Us old neighborhood kids are still thrashing around, riding our bikes, playing ball in the street, tromping through the hills and open spaces. We lived in a middle class subdivision up in the hills above town with a lot natural of open spaces to hang out and play in. Now it's no longer a middle class subdivision, as all the homes are priced at over two million apiece. Nor are any other parts of this California town middle class- the average home price even in the "Working Class" parts of town is still over a million dollars.
But in my mind and dreams, its still us middle class kids. Dad grousing around, my brother in and out doing his thing, neighborhood kids occasionally dropping by, and, when we were older, the same kids hanging out at the mall, the bowling alley, and all of the other places teenager hang out. The old school, and everything else looks the same, and everything is preserved like in a diorama, forever unchanging.
But the world doesn't work that way, of course. The high school has been rebuilt and remodeled. All of the neighborhood kids are gone; some of their own kids are now probably ready to graduate and go off to college. Same with all the old high school gang- buddies, old crushes and old enmities long since buried and forgotten. I realize that since I have left, a whole generation of kids has been born, grown up, gone to high school then college, and moved on with their lives, just like me. Kids I never even knew. I cruise the streets, and ride my bike around town, and see nobody I know- they're all gone. I walk through the neighborhood, and many houses have been rebuilt and remodeled, old 2000 square foot homes replaced by mini-mansions twice the size. Even most of the families, empty-nesting parents of the neighborhood kids I grew up with have moved. Dad is gone now, passed away, and even my brother rarely drops by Mom's house when I visit there, as he has his own family to take care of. The trees are grown up, screening away the view of the valley below where we used to run around.
I just returned from such a vacation. Came home feeling re-charged and refreshed, and even re-connected. But reconnected only to a geographical space; the sense of place no longer my own. You can only go home to a location, but to really, truly go home again, you would have to go backward in time as well. And unless you have one of those magical blue telephone boxes, you just can't.
Being recharged and refreshed also means being ready to embrace the present and the now, where things are far more interesting- and exciting. It's good to be home- here, where I live right now, as I finish typing this. Anyway, thanks for reading, see ya.
