You can go home again!

You Can’t Go Home Again….Really?

As rush-hour transitions into Friday evening and most of us Cincinnatians commute to our homes, gratefully submerge ourselves full-fledged into the weekend, my commute “home” will take on new meaning. It will consist of more than 576 miles of concrete and rebar, meandering through the Great Smoky Mountains, into Cherokee, North Carolina and ending in Covington, GA., my childhood home.

Yeah, I like the scenic route.

I am going back to visit high school friends, neighborhood shopkeepers, an elementary school bus driver and the week-old grave of a mother whose children I watched every Friday night for years. All of whom I became reacquainted with, after more than twenty years, on Facebook.

I want to drive the red dirt road to “our” five acres of GA Pine and lakefront property. I want to see the “House That Built Me” (thanks Miranda Lambert), walk the trails where I drove my go-cart and mini-bike, and stand on the dock where I caught catfish with my brother and my brood of boys (I was the only girl in a circle of five friends). Oh, and eat a Sunday meal at Henderson’s, where they’ll serve up aforementioned catfish, hush puppies and coleslaw like no other! And sweet tea…can’t forget the sweet tea.

As I reflect upon the people, places and events that molded me into the person I am continually becoming, I am grateful for my experiences and the lessons I have been able to draw from because of them. I learned perseverance and diligence from my best childhood friend’s family, headed by a single mom – like me - with four kids, working her way through nursing school at night, who still allowed me to go to Braves baseball games, college theatre and sleep in her king sized bed with all the kids, cooking me grits and bacon every Saturday morning. I learned how to love and accept those “different” than me, after witnessing one Clan Rally in the town square. I learned the importance of independence and responsibility by taking care of my brother. I learned how to swim, recognize poisonous snakes and endure hour-long bus rides in the GA heat. I learned the true meaning of Friday Night Lights, that a one-armed man can makes the best pot of Brunswick Stew and that no one can take me away from me. If I don’t allow it.

Sometimes I wonder where I would have been in life had I not left Covington. Who would be my children? Would I even have any? Would I have married my high school sweetheart? Would we have divorced by now? Would I be less progressive? Would I be more narrow-minded? Would I be wishing I had left home in search of something “greater”? Would I have found it?

Thomas Wolf’s George Webber stated “"You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time — back home to the escapes of Time and Memory." I disagree with Mr. Webber. His “can’t” indicates a reason to not even try. I think we CAN go home again. I think we SHOULD, lest we not forget ourselves and stop giving gratitude from where we came.

So, go home again. I have.

Actually, come to think of it, home’s a place I never left.