You Can Go Home Again

They say you can’t go home again…this is not true—you can and sometimes you should. But it won’t be the same—you can’t expect it to be the same; especially when forty years have passed as was the case when I went “home” again this summer.

For me Home was New York – where I was born (in New York City) and raised (in Rochester, NY) to the age of eleven.

My sister, who is three year younger than myself, and I went east this summer along our Heritage Trail – first to Cleveland, Ohio – where long dead relatives once lived and then onto Buffalo, NY or rather to Niagara Falls – where we had visited as young children. Apparently my father had filmed some new exhibit way back when; he was a film producer/director/editor – and wound up in Rochester, NY at Kodak –our next stop.

Here we roam the shopping plaza and apartment buildings of our youth with much aplomb and with many memories –some good and others not quite so good. We found our old elementary schools and found some changes, but not many. We found the woods we once played in and still found a heavily wooded path that we could still travel. That path wasn’t quite so wooded back forty years and it was probably easier to travel as children. Still we were both delighted that we managed explore the woods that meant so much to us.

We visited with the now much older parents of true best friends from our childhood.
We are now the age our parents were when they left Rochester. These folks knew us only as children – it must have been strange indeed for them to visit with us as adults. For me they now were wonderful people I could relate to as adults, as opposed to being simply the parents of my childhood best friend. They still have the playhouse that my father built for us – its been a tool shed in their backyard and it still stands—a testament to my father’s carpentry skills.

We also managed to visit the church we went to as children – and I found to my amused amazement the stained glass windows depicted not scenes of Jesus and the saints as so many mid-western churches to – but instead huge pictures of angels! These were the angels that guarded me as a child and which so influenced my life as an adult. No wonder I’m so into angels!!

We explored the huge Ellison Park, remembering lively times of snow sledding on its steep hills – they are still as steep as we remembered! This park meant much to us growing up and remains today still beautiful. We also managed to head up to our favorite amusement park on Lake Ontario—and found many of the same rides we loved as a child, including the ominous Jack Rabbit roller coaster—not quite so tall as I remember and the old merry-go-round with its colorful horses spinning to calipee music. Some things don’t change much with age – and for that we were grateful.

Next we headed towards New York City – Greenwich Village – where we both were born and I was raised during my first years of life. I don’t remember much of this time – although it was fun to see the brownstone I vaguely remember. And we went to the infamous ‘Beam Building’ otherwise known as the Empire State Building. On the rooftop of the brownstone, my father would point out the beam in the sky that issued forth from the Empire State Building – and I would marvel in delight. I have to say while the Empire State Building didn’t awe me as much as a child, I did marvel in delight at all the lights of Time Square – which television simply does not do justice.

I was also awed by the Statue of Liberty and loved the quaint little restaurants and elegant hotels of old that New York has; there is indeed an energy here which I could see could be addicting. But then people from Chicago say the same thing about their city too.

I was born in New York and raised in Rochester then moved to Central Florida (where New Yorkers were transplanting themselves). I once considered all these places my ‘home’. Now I live in the Chicago area – and have for close to fifteen years. Yet I don’t consider this area to be ‘home’ – or at least I didn’t until my summer trip to back east.

Home is where your heart is and where you lay your hat, figuratively speaking. I thought home for me was New York – but I found out that was simply where happy and not so happy memories lie. I lay down a few demons in this trip – and so now more happy memories than not remain for me. You can go home again—and all the past and present memories will remain intact—this I know for me is true.

I had fun on this trip, exploring new places and old. My memories served me well in traversing the past and I was glad I went. Once I was a New Yorker; but not so much any more. I don’t consider myself a mid-western either. My home is my sanctuary—a spot to lay my head and to contemplate the world while watching TV on my couch or for entertaining friends and family.

I have learned that it doesn’t matter where my home is…it is important to be present in my physical home where ever my heart is. And my heart and soul are travelers and explorers.

The old adage of you can’t go home again was wrong – you can and many a times, you should. It is a method of clearing the soul and setting the spirit on a new path. At least it was for me.

Picture: Blake Cahoon in front of her first elementary school where she first began talking to ghosts. Photo used by permission.
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