~GOING HOME~

Have you ever tried to go "home again"..back to something you remembered as being a wonderful place.  Perhaps a childhood home, a city that delighted you or even a Honeymoon place that you remember as being so gorgeous and romantic? 

 



I always wanted to go home again, where I was raised as a child.  Finally when all the children were grown and gone, we went.  No real plan to go there exactly but while we were in Oregon, I suddenly saw a familiar sign and yelled "turn here, turn here!"  We did and I found my way back home after nearly 50 years. 

 

I was too late.



When we turned down my street where I learned to ride a trike AND a bike and drove down the street where all the wonderful things had happened to me as a child...the birthday parties..Halloweens with all the other neighborhood kids..sliding down the hill on our sleds in Winter, making snow angels...playing hide and seek until dark when we would hear the Mom's begin to call us in.  This was where my baby brother took his first steps and where we grieved when he died at two years old... and where I sat on the front porch and read "Alice and Jerry" book from school, and learned to print my name...all of it...

We arrived in front of my home...and

IT WAS GONE!

That's right.  The little house with the cellar door and with the lilac's growing over the front porch, the huge fur tree in our front yard. The white picket fence..the apple tree's, all the berry vines, all of it

was gone.

It had burned to the ground just two weeks before I arrived.  People who now lived in the neighborhood came out and spoke to me.  No one that had lived there when I was a child..was there now.

The Maple tree's that lined our street were still there and had grown huge.  The street, looked smaller..all the homes were so small and the hill was hardly a hill at all.

 

I walked to the ruins of our home and picked up a piece of wood with the color of paint faintly showing.  Bits and pieces I carefully chose and they are wrapped carefully in tissue now and packed away.  I run across them every now and then as they are in with my photo's. 

 

As I stood in front of the vacant lot..I watched men busily sawing with power saws on the old Fir tree that had once stood so tall in our front yard and was so magnificent when covered with snow.  The very one that made me plant those Redwood tree's in my front yard.  Other workmen were farther back on the lot clearing the charred ruins of my childhood home.

 

Someone once told me "you can never go back" and they were right.  It's never the same.  If you do I hope it turns out happier than my experience.  Oh, you can go..but it won't be the same. 

I love tiny houses...I live in a Fairy Tale world and it's because of that little home that was once in Oregon.  When I think back as I do way too often now, I understand a lot about myself and why I love certain things.  Including my love for blue and white china.  A tiny set of Blue Willow china sits in my cabinet in living room.

When I get the feeling that I want to go back to some place in my past, I stop and remember those ashes.  That blank sad lot with the tree's being cut down, no flowers...no Boysenberries  or Raspberries..or nut trees..nothing.

I'll just keep trying to live in the HERE and NOW!  It's funny though.  My mind still wants to wander more and more into the past.  Sometimes it keeps me up at night remembering...always remembering..

Be kind to old folks who want to reminisce.  Please be patient with them because one day you may be doing the same thing...just like I did this evening.

Lovin' hugs,

Mona

 

*Did you notice that some little Fairy is going to come home and find her house is gone, replaced by a little log cabin and that everything looks different...even in a wheelbarrow garden.  :)  Time does that.