You Can Go Home Again

Someone once said "You can't go home again", but I disagree, you can go home again, it just isn't the same as when it was home.

A few weeks ago the woman I love and I took a trip down to Richmond, VA, to see her daughter. We made a side-trip to her childhood home. She knew where it was, but we drove by it because she didn't recognize it. It wasn't until we turned around and stopped when she realized it was the same place. The fields she remembered in the rear of the house were now planted with Japanese Bonsai trees, grass replaced with green houses.

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This was the first time she had been back there for thirty or more years, a long time. There were many changes to her neighborhood, what you would expect after all this time, businesses closed, a new shopping center, some new houses, etc. I can imagine it must be quite a shock when you return to a place you haven't been.

I have always lived within a few miles of the houses I grew up in. I never went away, I commuted to a local college, I never went into the service, always was close to home. I still live in the little house on the lake which was our summer cottage, so I never was away for any time. Therefore, any changes, and there are some, were gradual, an addition to the second house I lived in, the first I lived in I watch go through a long period of neglect and abandonment, then a rehab. But i always saw them happen. The last house I lived in before moving out from my parents, hasn't changed much in the last 40 years.

I know, I'm rambling. The point is for me I have witnessed the changes, unlike the woman I love who wasn't around for the ones at her place. I wonder which is worse, or better, not seeing or seeing the changes. Is it better to not see, remembering what was once, or watching the changes and forgetting what was once.

This leads us to the question: Is the past better off past? Should we forget about it? Should we try to forget only the bad and remember the good? Or forget it all? We shouldn't do what I am accused of doing all the time, and that is live in the past, but we can't forget our roots either. After all we must and can learn from the past. Whether we learn from mistakes we may have made or from successes, either way, we need to remember where we come from, and learn from it.

All this and i haven't even been drinking.