You can never go home again...
Andrew Largeman: You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.Sam: I still feel at home in my house.
Andrew Largeman: You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this right of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.
-- Garden State
This is the closest I could come to describing Thanksgiving. I love my family and I had a wonderful time this weekend, but by the end I wanted to go home. But where is home when its not where you grew up and its not where you live now?
This confusion seeped into every thought I had this weekend. Mostly it made me doubt my Christmas plans. I am really excited to see my Nebraska family, but it feels strange now. They don't really know who I am anymore, and I don't really know much about them. While we were growing up, Becca and I were the little girls, and everyone else was an aunt, uncle, cousin, or grandma. This was all we needed. Now, we're not little girls, so all of those relationships have changed. Now it is going to take work to redefine them.
By Sunday I realized that I am very nervous about going. I don't like flying by myself, I'm not really sure how to act once I get there, and its getting harder to spend Christmas without Steve. Unfortunately, I am not very adept to the power of positive thinking. Most likely I will just worry about it until I come back to Phoenix on December 29. There aren't really many alternatives, so I will just live through it, and hopefully be better for it.
posted by Rachel at
4:48 PM
1 comment(s):
Dear Rachel,
The truthfulness of your observations brought tears to my eyes. I know it seemed that I behaved strangely when you left for college, but from my own experience I knew that your were leaving home, and as Thomas Wolfe wrote, "you can't go home again."
T.S. Eliot wrote:
Home is where one starts from. As we grow
older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern
more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
As your father I rejoiced in our Thanksgiving reunion and eagerly look forward to the coming together of our family for Christmas. You are so right that family is a dynamically elusive concept, but try not to let your youthful impatience prevent you from the discovery that comes only with time: home truly is where your heart is.
Love,
Dad
By
Mark A Hanna, at
1:45 PM
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