Home Ain’t What It Used to Be . . . But It’s Still Home

Tomorrow, I’ll be heading “back home” to Rochester, NY, and the house where I grew up.  It’s something I’ve done every year over Labor Day weekend for three decades–ever since I moved away from the old place, really.  And, every year, it’s a small chunk of time I circle on the calendar–something to look forward to.  Something to cherish.

 

This year is no different.  I am eager to go, and will surely take a couple of days and enjoy some much-needed R & R.  Upon my return to my present home in the hills of east-central Vermont, I’ll resume the day-to-day schedule of bills, repairs, deadlines, deadlines, and more deadlines.  Which is a good thing–don’t get me wrong.  It’s good to be busy.

In years past, my excitement level for the trip back home was high–sometimes so high, I’d count down the days beginning in May or June.  “Eighty-four days till my trip; seventy-three days; forty-two days . . .”  Like a kid counting down to Christmas morning during the weeks preceding its coming.  And while I am looking forward to the trip this year, too, it is not quite with the same gusto, the same species of fervor and anticipation.  It is now like Christmas for adults–still a special day, but no longer something to be anticipated with the euphoria of children.

 

The reason for this slight muting of my old excitement levels is, simply, the passing of time, and the passing of my parents.  My mother passed in 2018; my father earlier this year.  This will be the first time I “go back” to my childhood home without either of my parents there.  The house is still in the family; it’s still home.  But the heart of the home, the essence, has been ripped away, torn asunder.  It is but a shadow of what it used to be.  It can never be the same.

Perhaps that’s good, in its own way.  Time passes.  Decades come and go.  Even if we sometimes don’t want to, life on Earth forces us to grow up, move on, mature.  Nothing remains stagnant.  Everything is moving and changing and racing, all the time, like water rushing downhill to the sea.  There is no holding it back.

 

But it’s hard.  And, in a way, some things are permanent, eternal.  Unchanging.  The house where I grew up contains within its walls, under its roof, memories and moments that live on–in my soul and, sometimes, in the stories and blog posts I write.  When I arrive there this weekend, I will experience these memories powerfully.  I’ll close my eyes and look back across the span of thirty years, forty years.  I’ll see a little kid–me–and his parents, talking, living together in the old house situated right at the center of the block.  I’ll remember specific moments, conversations, games, sadnesses, dreams, joys, events.  They will feel close, present.  Real enough to reach out and grasp.

I expect to stroll through the house late at night or early in the morning, the only one awake,  And experience it all.  In that moment, I will feel the sting of loss, of impermanence, of life’s brutal command that we move on and forward.  Always forward.  Leaving the past further and further behind in our personal rearview mirror as we walk along the highway of advancing years.

 

But I’ll feel something else, too.  I’ll feel that, at the soul level, at the heart level, there is no such thing as time, at least not in the way we measure it here.  I’ll feel the enduring reality of love, of things precious beyond words, events and memories and moments and people that live on, always.  Nothing, truly, is ever lost.

So, yes.  Home is no longer the same.  It has been stripped down to the studs, as it were.  The heart of the place has been removed . . . but only on the surface level.

At the deeper level, it remains what it’s always been.  And for a couple of days this weekend, I’ll step into that.

And I’ll remember.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike