I haven't blogged in almost a month. Three weeks. Lots of thoughts in my head but very little getting out. In my defense....well, really, I got nothing. I've either been in a state of apathy doing very little or too busy to write. Seriously, I am all about opposite ends of the spectrum. I've got half a dozen ideas to get out of my system so I'll probably be blogging till the end of 2009. Which isn't that long now.
Thus, I'm starting another blog for random thoughts and musings that aren't necessarily related to God and faith. You already know that, you're reading it.
I should start with my Thanksgiving thoughts but I want to get things out of my head in order. Order is important for me. I like chronologicalness. Not sure if that was a word before I wrote it just this moment but, moving on.
There's that old saying about 'you can't go home again'. I'm not sure where it came from and I haven't looked it up to find out but I get what the speaker was trying to say. I both agree and disagree with the statement. I think it's true but with a clause on it, a rider attached to it, if you will. I think 'you can't go home again and have it or you be the same.'
You can totally go home again though. Don't most of us at some point? Some of us a lot more than others. After we've gone off to college, graduated and moved out of mom and dad's, or mom's, or dad's, don't most of us trickle back home? It can start out more often at first then slowly get less and less over the years. Or it might start sparingly and increase in quantity. It can be annually, bi-annually, quarterly, whatever.
At first home is familar territory and we might feel more confident there. Doing laundry at our parent's plae is cheaper and probably safer than that laundry mat down the street. We don't get lost at home but in our new city finding a grocery store becomes one of Hercules' endevors. Our home church or hangout or coffee shop makes us feel at home but that kind of nice looking bagel place around the corner from our new residence is weird and new and we feel like a tourist walking in the door.
Quick Rabbit Hole: Not to say that some folks do leave home and never look back. Ever. Home is too painful, oppressive, dysfunctional, or abusive to return, or they have to break free so bad, it's an all or nothing good-bye. That's not who I'm talking about.
We go back for lots of reasons: birthdays, babies, weddings, funerals, holidays, and sometimes in a blue moon, we go for no reason at all. The point being we can go home again.
But home is not the same. To be fair, neither are you but more on that in a moment.
Life at home does not stop and pause simply because you are not there. Children are born, children grow, people die, couples happen, boyfriend and girlfirends break up, marriages happen, divorces perhaps. People graduate. Jobs are gained and lost. The same thing happens with weight and hair for some people. Grandparents get older.
New buildings go up and businesses expand. Downtown changes. New traffic lights and signs are everywhere. One way streets become two way. Streets get built where cornfields used to grow. New businesses come into old locations, replacing previous entrepeneurs. Other buildings are abandoned and some markets shrink and businesses close. The movie theater gets updated.
To make a long story short (too late), life moves on. Home continues growing, laughing, learning, loving, living without you. Time goes forward and home changes. It is rarely the same as you left it.
But you have changed as well. It is not fair to place all the blame on home. You are not the same person who left. Your life has moved forward as you've grown, and changed, sometimes reverted and devolved.
The circumstances, people and places you have been and known and experienced have altered and shaped and modified you, sometimes subtely and sometimes dramatically. How you react and how you behave is often fundamentally different, at least if you are continuing to grow into the person you want to be.
You are not the same. Home is not same. But you can go back.
In the cycle of life, one of the strange things about growing older and going home is that there seems to be a script, but now you are playing a different role. When I was a young mom, and my first husband and I came back to stay at my parent's house, we felt pretty comfortable. My mom loved having us there and cooked and cleaned; my dad was quieter but I could tell he was happy to see us.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes felt as though my mom was showing me off--here's my daughter who married the young minister and moved to Rhode Island. Later, once I had children, it was more like here's my daughter and my GRANDCHILDREN!
Now I am the mom who looks forward to my daughter coming home...and so enjoyed your recent visit. I'm glad we could all go down and see your grandfather and surprise him with an early birthday party. It isn't that often that I get all of "my kids" together, and increasingly, I wish I could tell my own mother that I understand much more now how precious those visits were, and how much she meant (and means) to me. Back to grading...keep up the blogging, my dear!