DAY 54 - HOME AGAIN

Today was all about visiting my old Stomping Grounds. Redwoods Heights Elementary, where I attended all 7 years. It’s different now, with a couple of major additions, and the baseball fields are gone. Montera Junior High is now a Middle School and seems much smaller and less “crisp”. Skyline High – I couldn’t even drive up on campus, and it sure has changed, but I guess 30-years will do that to a place.

   I drove through my old neighborhood, remembered the Bybees, Tsangs, Taylors, Jack, Boggs, Ethel, Jeffries, Wilmonts, the neighbor we called “Tobacco Man” because he always had a cigar hanging out of his mouth – all gone now. The houses all painted different colors. Hedges and trees cut down. The Trout Pond no longer surrounded by wild blackberries – that we were often sent to pick for a nice dessert, but only half ever made it home.

   I stopped in front of my childhood home, and desperately wanted to go up to the door and knock – pull a Miranda Lambert to walk through the house, the basement, the backyard. But it didn’t look like anyone was home, and even just through the front window I could tell that it wasn’t MY Home anymore. Dad’s recliner isn’t in the living room, Mom’s needlework isn’t on the coffee table, Tref won’t bark when I walk up to the door. I’m sure the stain on my bedroom carpet (from spilling red food coloring) is long gone. And the doorknob I broke off when I got trapped in my bedroom closet has long since been replaced.

   And that’s what made it Home to me. It was more than the four-walls – it was what happened within them. The Thanksgiving Dinners we had in the dining room. The amazing (and absolutely perfect) Divinity candy that my mother made in the kitchen. The evenings we hosted Rook Club, and there were 4 card tables, 16 chairs, and a million laughs shared.

   Because it’s people that make a house a home. It’s the love and life shared there. And now that my parents are gone, I will never have a place quite like that again. It was a fabulous childhood – but adulthood is irreversible.

   So this week in Oakland I reminisce and remember. But I don’t really have to fly back to Oakland to do it, because I always have those memories with me. Sometimes having a good memory is a curse, because I have such a challenge of letting things go. But it also means that I can be with Mom and Dad anytime I want, because they are always with me – only just a memory away.