Going Home
I went home to visit my mom for her birthday last weekend. As I drove down the street toward my childhood home, I noticed how different the neighborhood looked. None of the houses have been torn down. No buildings have been put up in their place. It was different because all the cars have changed. The neighbors I remember in the snapshot of my mind from all the years I spent growing up there have moved on, and new cars have now been parked in their driveways.
The vehicle that stuck out the most was a red truck parked in front of my parents’ house. Even though my father died in 2017, I still think of it as their house, our family home. I was lucky enough to spend birth through age 18 inside the same four walls. That means I have incredibly vivid memories of growing up there. It’s pretty easy to remember things when the setting is always the same.
At the same time, it’s also so strange going inside the house now because, while everything is the same, it’s all much smaller. The house hasn’t actually changed. But, as a kid, everything seemed so huge and grown-up sized. Now as a grown-up, I feel like Gulliver in Lilliput, stomping around with my giant shoes, turning tiny doorknobs, plopping my wide, destructive behind on a miniature toilet seat.
I should clarify that this is only my perspective. In reality, it is a regular size toilet. They are regular size doorknobs. I'm pretty sure I have average sized feet. But the way that they’ve been burned into my brain is completely different than reality. It makes me wonder if all the things I remember about growing up there truly happened the way I thought they did, or if they’ve been warped by perspective. Shrank or blown up, burned in or forgotten.
That’s the hard thing about trying to go back to a place. Even if the walls still stand, the place is necessarily different because of time. Things get worn out. You grow. Things seem smaller. Or, maybe they really do shrink. (It's entirely possible my mom is subtly miniaturizing things in her home year-by-year in order to mess with my head.)
So even though I can go home in theory, I can’t really go home. Walking the halls, everything is exactly the same but totally different.
Take the living room for example. The spot where our Christmas tree used to stand every year is now filled by my grandmother’s cedar chest. There’s a slot machine on top of it, the result of my and my brother-in-law Aaron’s impulsivity as we shopped for a casino party that got a little out of hand. Next to that is my mom's mini trampoline where she does her aerobics. It is also a convenient plaything for my four-year-old niece. But those things won't be moved aside this year for the placement of a tree.
Even though the tree no longer has a space, I can still see the silhouette of where it would stand. I can imagine how the lights would bounce off the walls. The way we would spread our gifts out on that old thick brown carpet we grew up with, replaced long ago with a light pink medium pile.
The brown wooden shutters where we used to hang our stockings are still there. We could still hang our stockings, I guess. But it wouldn't be the same. The years passing means that the definition of home changes. If I hung my stocking back in that house in Mesquite, I wouldn’t get any candy. Santa doesn’t stop there for me anymore.
Anyway, the red truck caught my eye that day because, for decades, my dad's work van stayed parked in that spot. No one else parked there, ever. It was a known fact of the neighborhood. When he switched jobs several decades ago and sold the van, long after I'd moved out, I guess the spot came up for grabs.
As I pulled up last weekend, the red truck in that spot was a punch to the gut, a sharp reminder of something that’s impossible to forget. The years have passed, and he’s gone.
But just because something is lost doesn’t mean it’s over. Walking down that hallway beside the generations of faces framed and hanging on the walls, sitting in the living room imagining the tree in its old space, standing in the backyard where I spent year after year running and falling and playing pretend: there is still a buzz. The energy of a joyful life that, although it has moved on, never really left.
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