You Can't Go Home Again...

Mom's House

I’ve been spending a great deal of time at my Mom’s house lately; helping her convalesce from a health event she had a couple of weeks ago. Time spent there is always a walk down Memory Lane, remembering old times, family gatherings, and just the day to day life that I spent there. As I looked out across the gardens and well-kept lawn, the giant shade trees and the orchards, a thought came to mind. There are so many places that exists only in my mind’s eye... familiar places... places near and dear to my heart, and which I visit often as I write these stories about growing up in Southern Alamance County, North Carolina... about how things used to be and how that’s different from how things are now. 

Mom’s house has changed as the deck and sunroom were added on... the surrounding landscape changed as trees grew, flower gardens were planted, and new houses sprang up within sight. Even the nearby towns have changed so much that when I moved back here four years ago, it was like moving to somewhere I’d never lived before... new road networks to learn, new stores to memorize the location to, things/places that no longer existed (or that had changed so much that they might as well have been something brand new). Time moves on, and with it change comes. That’s just the nature of things, and places, and people. And most of all, we change... a little bit every day.

Oh, the Times I've Walked This Driveway...

I’ve heard it said that “You can’t go home again!”, and I know what that means now. It’s not that you can’t go to the same location, the same town, even the same house... it’s that things change over the course of time. People come and go... businesses change locations or just disappear altogether... even the “old home place” changes as saplings grow to huge shade trees, or a garage is added where once only lawn was. We’re happy for the progress at the time, but how often do we stop and realize what we’re losing in the process?

I remember looking out across the field that’s always been beside Mom’s house and seeing my grandparents’ house, with the old wooden garage out back, and a huge (to me at the time) barn out back of that. The garage and house are still there,

Looking Across the Field at Grandma's House

though no one lives in the house anymore, but the barn has long since been torn down. Yet I can still see it as clearly as if it were still there, and I was about to climb up the rickety wooden ladder that lead to the hayloft. I can walk around the yards at my grandparents’ house and point out to you where Granddaddy had his fishing worm “bin” that he made, or where the old apple trees once stood (and when the apples were likely to be ripe)... I can show you where Grandmother’s clothes line used to be, and the hole under the side of the house that the barn cats always used to climb into to have their kittens. I can show you where the fig bush was, and still taste the sweetness of a fully ripened fig, and feel the stickiness of the sap where I pulled it off the bush to eat it. The details of that place, forever preserved in my mind’s eye, are astounding... all I have to do is just go for a walk down that particular Memory Lane to see it all.

I can remember finally being released from chores in the house, racing out the back door (slamming the screen door and being told not to slam it again), bouncing down the porch steps and out into the yard where adventure waited to be found. I remember every detail of that back yard... how small the trees were, where the sandpile beckoned at the edge of the woods, and where the swing set was. I can remember laying on my bed at night and hearing the whip-o-wills (where have they all gone?) and crickets and frogs as I drifted off to sleep each night. So many details come to mind... of a place that once was, of a time that will never exist again, and a childhood that was full of adventure just waiting around the next tree, bush, or corner.

A Creek in the Woods
(not ours, but similar)

Not long after I moved back here, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, a few of us went walking in the woods out back of the house. As we wandered past the old back field that Dad once planted with corn (or something else), I noticed how trees and meadow grasses had started to reclaim that area again, and a part of me sighed inside at the change. We made our way to the creek at the bottom of the hill, and I noticed how that had changed, though not as much in some places... the water was still icy cold... the banks were still steep... and it was still too wide to jump across in most places. We made our way to the place where Dad would always take the family for a picnic. Nothing about it looked the same, but my sister assured me that it was the same place. I remembered a soft layer of grass beside a creek where the bank dipped down to the edge of the water. I remembered a shoal of sand where we could step from creek bank to sand and straight into the water. I remembered a giant tree nearby. Some of that was still there, but the bed of soft grasses was gone, and the undergrowth had grown to such a degree that the place seemed new somehow. It wasn’t the same picnic place... the location was the same, perhaps, but the place itself (its surroundings) were all different.

The Saplings of "Yesterday"

The places we remember are like a patchwork quilt of treasured memories, eternally etched in the Annals of Time... our time. These precious places and people are part of our stories... our journal of a life well lived. My Mom remembers her childhood and all the years since, as if they were yesterday, visiting them often with laughter and fond memories. My daughter, still in her 20’s, remembers her childhood, her brothers, and the places we’ve lived, with far more vivid details than my memories are fading into. It’s our sanctuary that we all go to now and then... full of memories, joy, and yes - sorrow, that make each of us into the person we become. It’s the very fabric on which our life’s story is woven.

Hold fast to those memories. Visit often those treasured places. It’s within those places, learned by heart, that we find our roots. It’s outward from those self-same places that we see the crooked path that lead to where each of us are today.

There are places that exist only in my mind’s eye... but once upon a time, not so very long ago, they were real... they were loved... and they are part of who I am today.

Some memories are unforgettable, 

remaining ever vivid and heartwarming.

~ Joseph B. Wirthlin ~