My house is gone.
I recently visited my hometown for the first time in years. When I rounded a curve and looked for the house, I realized it was missing. I vaguely remember a sister mentioning it was demolished, during our telephone conversation a couple of years ago, but I did not remember this change when planning our family's return visit. The empty space made quite an emotional impact on me, and I had to collect myself before fully enjoying the visit with my children and siblings.
My father built our house, and completed it about a year before my birth. My siblings and I lived there until marriage, college and/or careers took us to various places after high school. My parents lived there until their deaths, and they were actually cared for in the home by family and Hospice caregivers as their lives were nearing an end. We sold the property in the late 1990s, and a new owner recently built a much larger house on an adjacent property. The yard I circled endlessly on my Suzuki dirt bike is now just a small corner of a lawn encompassing several acres.
This change is a tangible symbol of the passage of time, and fellow North Carolina native Thomas Wolfe used the statement "You Can't Go Home Again" in a famous novel about his life and changes. In some ways, we yearn to return to family, friends and experiences we can never relive. Moments which have passed us by will now forever elude our grasp. In some ways, however, we can return and reconnect with those we love, and even build better and stronger bonds as we move along the journey of life together. My Christian faith also informs my belief that "home" is also a concept which transcends a building, or even this mortal body. My true "home" is a spiritual connection with the God who loves each of us, and who calls us to an eternal relationship with him (and in some mysterious ways that I don't fully understand, with one another as well).
My children and I greatly enjoyed the visit "back home" in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. We were able to visit family members, I had the opportunity to see high school friends, and I even hopped on a dirt bike for what one sister called my "Evel Knievel impersonation."
Maybe it wasn't exactly reliving my childhood, but in many ways it was a refreshing journey "home." We'll be making that trip again soon.
