You Can’t Return Home …

Or, at least, the “home” you remember after you’ve moved away.

During our class reunion, my friend, Derrick, asked if I had gone by my old homestead yet. I had not. He said that it doesn’t look the same. “You’ll recognize it, but it’s not the same.” I told him that I’d go by tomorrow.

Tomorrow came.

Derrick was right. The place had changed since I had last seen it in 2011 after the tornado outbreak. The deep ditches my brother, Chris, and I once had a horrible time mowing had shallowed drastically over the years. Nothing steep about them anymore.

The giant Silver Maple that towered in the front yard was gone. My father had planted it in 1969. He ordered it from Michigan Bulb Company and said it was the size of a weed. Not seeing the tree was a loss, but its absence was only one reason the old homestead seemed alien.

Directly behind the house was a V-shaped maple that was over forty feet in height the last I visited. The neat thing about that tree was it prevented a large pine from falling directly onto the house in November 1992 when a late tornado had come through the yard. Because of the maple’s V shape, it caught the pine and saved the house from needing a new roof. It, too, is gone.

Did I expect everything to look the same? No, of course not. So much changes through the years, and the Pleasant Hill Community had become totally different. The dirt road that once went behind our house and cut through to another road on the other side of Boykin Farms had become a grove of large pines, oaks, and maples.

In the pasture behind my mother’s former house is the pond where I fished during my teens and early twenties. Midway across the pasture where a small stream trickled was a thick grove of trees, a barrier that did not exist a few decades earlier. Some of the massive oaks and maples that bordered the far side of the pond and along the barbed wire fence lie broken in hulkish, decaying sections.

Had I brought my hiking boots or a pair of old tennis shoes, I would’ve made the walk to the old pond; the pond where I had caught two six-pound bass. My friend and neighbor had later caught a ten pound bass and took it to a taxidermist. I have fond memories fishing there. It was a pleasant place where I fished with my friends, Tony Miller and Jerry Blanchett.

In July 1984, near the pond was a fence covered with honeysuckle where I caught my first and only Giant Swallowtail for my collection. I did a lot of insect collecting in those pastures and woods. But now, the place seems foreign. I understand these changes didn’t occur overnight. It was gradual, day by day, over two decades, and when you’ve not seen the area during that amount of time, it jolts the mind.

Down the hill from my childhood home were a line of newer houses, which had been a field. We drove past and turned right at the next road. When I was in elementary school, an old rundown house had been on the left. It has been gone for years, long before I moved away, and the foundation is now covered with tall trees.

The house is one I can’t forget. A family had lived in it for a short time, and a girl about a year older than I had once gotten on the school bus on the coldest day of winter. She had no shoes, no coat, and was shaking from the cold. Our bus driver, Mrs. Wright, asked her if she had any shoes or a coat. Ashamed, the girl shook her head. Though I’m not certain, I believe our bus driver and some of the teachers helped get her shoes and a coat. A few months later, they moved away.

Farther down this road, the houses I considered old when I was a teenager had collapsed, been removed, or were covered with pine trees. Some larger, luxurious houses are now along the bluff I loved to climb and hunt for arrowheads. Across the road and a few hundred yards from these houses is where the dirt road behind our house connected to this road. Had Boykin Farms not put a gate at the end of this road, I would’ve had a difficult time even recognizing the old dirt road. The pasture grass had spread across the road and claimed it, leaving little more than a scar of the former road.

Time’s passage has distorted various landmarks that my memory still recalls. The places where I explored, collected insects, and fished are no longer the places I remember. Areas I might’ve once stated that I knew as well as the back of my hand have changed, as have I. I’m okay with this. The strength of my memories remain. The fondest times of my youthful explorations are alive in my mind. Even though I can never revisit them physically, I can return to them in my mind.

Our 40th Class Reunion opened my eyes about a lot of things. The one thing we cannot escape is the hand of time. Time marches on, and no matter how desperate we are to slow its pace, it continues to pull us forward without hesitation. Time is limited. My goal is to make productive use of what time remains in my life, and it’s my hope that everyone else chooses to do the same.