You can’t go”home” again
Posted by quirksalight on November 7, 2007
It’s the first week back in Northern Virginia and in the house my parents have been in since I was in high school.
Stepping into my old room, with the furniture I’d picked out when young was a bit strange. Especially since the place had slowly been turning into the office/upstairs storage room in the years since high school. I left for college and haven’t lived here in the years since, with a couple months exception in 2001 (when no one was able to find a job).
Now, I’m going through piles of paper and books, readjusting the furniture so it can hold my things and my mother’s office supplies/equipment, and wondering if this arrangement will work for the time I need it to. It’s an adjustment for them too; neither of us are used to living with the other. All of a sudden they are parents, all of a sudden I have parents; neither in absentia for the first time in years.
The quote titling this post by Thomas Wolfe is right; you really can’t go back home again. You go back, but it’s just a pitstop on your journey. Time marches on, and so does the concept of home.
