Thursday, July 7, 2011

You Can't Go Home Again

Well, actually you can. While it may not be the home you remember, it's still home.

Today I went back to the town and house where I lived the first 20 years of my life. Both places have changed quite a bit over the past 30+ years, and yet they've stayed the same. I rode past Suzanne's house where I spent the night, past Amy's house that I would pass on the way to town, and past the road to the school where I spent the first six years of my academic career. I rode out in the country where my grandmother's house and our little country store were no longer standing, but the posts that held the bench around the big pecan tree were still stubbornly holding on. I road past downtown and saw Montgomery's Jewelry Store was still there and Main Street still had the semblance of what it once was. I rode out to the college where the campus swimming pool is long gone, but the building where I worked as a secretary looked exactly the same.

I guess the whole thing about going home is that as we change, so do those places we call home. The things about us and them that don't change are the memories that are forever stored in our hearts. The lawn hasn't grown smaller, because in our hearts we're still the little kids playing chase. The house isn't gone, because in our hearts we're still swinging in that porch swing. The restaurant we went on dates is not really a bank now, because in our hearts it's still that place we ordered a pound of ground round.

It's easy to go home again. You just have to go there in your heart.
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Today's blessings: lunch and McAllister's with Steve, GDiz, and Anne; visiting Starkville and MSU

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