You Can't Go Home

You Can’t Go Home…                      7-31-2013

By John W. Vander Velden

 

I watched some young Blue Birds that have been moving about our yard for a month or so, as they returned one afternoon to examine the house which must have been their earliest home.  One by one they clung to the old wood, peaking within the dark space it contained.  Though none entered the box, I wondered what they might be thinking about the small space that had once contained their whole world.  When they at last flew off, I thought that they had realized that they couldn’t go home again.

Surely there has been a time, when we too understood that we could never return to the place of our childhood memories.  Perhaps that place no longer exists.  But even if it does, our present examination shows it much different than we had remembered.  No, we can’t go home again, if home is some place that, shaped by our minds, may never have really existed in the first place.  Though it is true that the world changes -- the places -- the people -- it is more true that, “our world” has changed and continues to do so.  Home of those by-gone days is more than a building on some street in some town.  It also includes the people there.  It includes the attitudes we carried then, as well as the attitudes of others we had bumped into.  We have grown too large for the “box” that once made up our whole world.  In truth we just don’t fit!

But that may be only one definition of “home”.  Home should be more than just a local and era.  It should be a place where we know we belong.  A place that no matter how far we roam -- how much we have grown -- that will accept us upon our returning.  It should be the place where people love us -- even though they know us.  Where we find acceptance and unconditional welcome.  Yes, that is the home that calls us back time and time again.

And there is the other definition of home.  The place you find yourself and the people that fill your everyday.  That is the home you take with you.  It surrounds you and is the “every part” of your life.  You may move -- go to another city -- or country for that matter, but if even one person travels with you -- one person that cares -- then you have brought “home” along.  In that respect you cannot go home -- because you are already there.

(423 Words)