Thomas Wolfe once said “you can’t go home again.”  I recently found that out.  The other day a random article was on my news feed.  It was a story from my old hometown and even involved an incident on the road I used to live on.  I was discussing it with my husband and he asked if I ever thought about our old house.

No, I told him.  Hardly ever.  He had recently went to Google Earth and looked it up out of curiosity.  So he took me there.  The house itself is almost completely torn down.  He asked me if it bothered me and I said no.  It was not a big deal to me.

Later that night. alone in my thoughts, I started to wonder if it should bother me.  I lived in that house for about 50 years.  We had birthdays, holidays, parties and other great times there.  I was a child there, a young bride there, a divorced woman there and a not-so-young bride there.  Then I remembered the not so great times.  As I have spoken in previous posts, the house itself overwhelmed me.  I constantly worried about the leaking roof, the outdated septic tank, pipes freezing due to not being able to afford fuel oil, bugs eating the wood and many other calamities.

Is it really possible to simply walk away from something that enveloped an almost entire life without any remorse?  My conclusion was yes.  I felt nothing, never had any intention of ever going back there.  Do I sound ungrateful?  Maybe to some, but I realized that my situation was not one that required me ever going to that home ever again.

I have learned over the years that going home, to me and me only, means going to where Mike and I are, where my friends are at and where my present day life is.  When we were on the road, Devi (the name of our car) was our home as we lived in her or the tent we sent up in Jackson Hole, WY or Lemon Cove, CA.  Home was the place we did some Help Exchange work.  And now home is in our small but wonderful basement apartment.

I guess I that maybe my soul needed to a little bit more freedom.  The old house represents to me a place where I hid from the world.  I did not venture out too far because it was way to scary out there.  It was my own self-imposed prison.  Many a day and night were spent wishing for something different.  I  had to  go through all those things to get here today.   That has been the main lesson of my journey so far.

I do hope that the people who live on the property are happy there.  It was beautiful property.  I hope they enjoy it and make it theirs.  I never was able to do that, so many good wishes I send them.  I am enjoying my less complicated life.

Every day after work, I look forward to going home.  Today that means one thing, tomorrow it may mean another.  Who knows?  That is part of the adventure we call life.  But for today, as long as our landlords allow it, we will stay here and call it home.