A few days ago I went home. Except it actually wasn’t. It wasn’t “home,” I mean. I went to the town where I grew up to meet some folks for lunch. I drove down early in order to have time to just drive around and see the old stomping grounds. Apparently it’s a different stomp now.
There are new shopping centers that weren’t there when I was. And some of the old ones where I went regularly for clothing, groceries, and movies – those are now corporate offices.
I had numerous surgeries in our old hospital, all of which worked out fine. There were three surgeons in town back then. They shared the same office. This week I saw a spacious medical center where the old hospital had been, with a new heart center, cancer center, and orthopedic center attached. The small brick offices that housed doctors when I was young have been abandoned for newer, larger, higher tech physicians’ practices.
The downtown has had a facelift, too, with boutiques and wonderful restaurants, all of which were new to me. The old textile mill only a block off the main drag has been transformed into buildings that now house condos and lofts. The old radio station where my father spent his whole career (and where I was a deejay for four years) is closed and boarded up. It’s still easy to go downtown, just not to the one I remember.
As a boy, the church our family attended seemed like the largest church building in the world. I drove past it this week and realized it’s not exactly the size of the Vatican after all.
I also drove by the high school where I graduated. Much of it looks the same. The football stadium still fronts the highway, announcing to all drivers that the mighty Blue Comets play there. I remember them as mighty. Often state champs. Producing college recruits and at least two college All-American plus a guy who had a pro career. I don’t know who suits up nowadays, or how talented they are. I just know that they are still children who will go home to parents who wash their clothes and cook their dinners. Behind the school is a new building with the word “Global” in its title. My hometown was wonderful, but not “global.” Isn’t “global” at least supposed to have an airport? The old school has a new ethos. And, “new” equals “different.”
At the restaurant, I bumped into a woman I thought I had never met before. I assumed she was the wife of one of my old classmates. She shared her name with me. It was totally unfamiliar. I shared mine with her. She said, “Nice to meet you, Mark!” Mark? Clearly we were strangers. As it turned out, we were in the same graduating class.
For a brief while I sat in front of the house where I grew up. “Home” … but again, not really. It’s the same address, to be sure. It has the same structural bones. But it doesn’t look like our house did. We lived in a frame house. It is now brick. We had a screened-in porch half as large as the dwelling itself. It was wonderful on warm summer nights with the ceiling fan stirring the air. It has been renovated and bricked over, as well. It looks great. It just doesn’t look like the place where Mom, Dad, and I lived. The backyard basketball backboard and goal where I shot hoops year round has disappeared. Obviously, there was no evidence of the old TV antenna behind the house. I used to go there and turn it whenever we wanted to change channels (we only had four channels back then). In my mind I could picture the outdoor football games with Jim and Mark and Tommy and Walter and Don and Ken. None of them live in town anymore. Some are no longer alive at all. I saw the house and neighborhood, but what is not there any longer is the “home” where I grew up.
Thomas Wolfe was correct. You can’t go home again. You can return to the locale, to the geographic area, to the structure of a community. But, “home” is something other than that. As we age, often “home” exists in the land of memory. The aging guys who sat at our table and ate together, in my memory, are all young. We talked about those days. The school. The ball games. The Friday nights hanging out at Sherwood Drive-in with cheeseburgers and Cherry Cokes. The belief we all had back then that the world lay at our doorsteps and we would change it. The boundless energy and optimism and hope. In our remembering, for a couple hours we were home again. The community around us has changed. But our visions of once-upon-a-time remain intact. They comprise a world that changing landscapes cannot undo.
Similarly, in my mind, my children are still small, holding my hand as we cross the street, saying “Daddy” in unchanged voices as if it were a term of reverence. One of my classmates became a highly respected Baptist clergyman. Early in his career, he served a congregation in the city where I now live. He said to me with a smile tinged with sadness, “It doesn’t exist any longer.” But, I could tell that it does to him.
As long as we are able to remember, there is a world to which we can at least briefly escape. Old faces smile and wait for us there. Old experiences are just as adventurous. Places that no longer exist actually remain there, unscathed by what we call “progress.” Brilliant ones like Jung and Buechner said the same is true in the land of dreams. In our minds, the past exists as a reality. We can travel there and refresh our spirits. We can be with others who shared our youth and our dreams. Thank God for that. Some things were too precious to be disposed of. In our minds, in our dreams, in our memories, that’s where at least part of “home” is. If, however, we want something more substantial than that, well, Wolfe knew what he was talking about.