If you ask each
person, their place is the best in the world, the most beautiful, most bountiful,
most colorful, and so special that tomes had been written about it, yet here
they are. They are so far away and yearning to get back to that amazing place
they identify with – a place of wonder, love, friends, cherished memories, and
family, with all the things they perceive as missing in the present.
People adorn
their cars with flags and bumper stickers, names of the places they miss, and photos
of deceased loved ones. They wear memorabilia on their sleeves or place things
in their yards and homes that remind them of their homes. The yearning is so
raw and powerful, exposed to the world to see, that you can’t help but wonder
why they left in the first place.
But they can
never go back home again or to that unique place for many reasons. The most
profound is that home and everything around it they remembered has moved on and
changed. Whatever one is searching for, it is no longer there. Landscapes
change, natural disasters remodel the earth, buildings are demolished to make
room for parks, new areas develop, high rises are built, streets are redrawn, regimes
change, people get old and move on, and people die. The obsession, the place,
the person, the unidentifiable “je ne sais quois,” is no longer there.
The new home
overwhelms life here and now; time robs everything and everyone; people try to adjust
to the new place, the new reality, and time continues to fly, hour by hour. Humans
make new friends, build families, bring old ones with them, but that something
special from long ago is missing – a certain food, a smell, a custom, a song, a
mysterious perfume, flowers, a lilac bush, or grandma’s garden with scented
roses in full bloom.
The smell of machine oil brings back memories of my grandfather. His repair shop with a myriad of old tools, under the lean-to by the adobe house, had been torn long ago by his grandson who inherited the house. It was personally sad to see it gone. But his cellar was still there, and I did not have to go down the steps to smell the cool and earthen damp air, the potatoes, the onions, the garlic strung up on braided stalks, and the fresh apple scent, it was all in my olfactory memory.
The fragrance of the white mulberry tree I found one day in Virginia, and the sweet aroma of its fruits brought back memories of my childhood adventures to the corn field and the lone and majestic walnut tree behind grandma’s house. I wished to go back to see those trees one more time and, when I did, they were gone. One succumbed to disease and the walnut tree had been cut down because it got so massive that it was shading the rows of corn too much. The delicious walnuts of my memory were no longer there but I could still recall my stained hands from picking walnuts when the green shells were falling off, but it had plenty of dye left in the pulp.
As we age and become wiser and more in touch with our purpose on earth, we yearn to return to our roots in the never-ending circle of life, but the roots are no longer there either any more than the memories of those with whom we shared a common trunk and branches – they have all scattered into the winds to set roots elsewhere or to enrich the earth.
Just last weekend went by my old grade school, Major Hudson Elementary. The brick building still stands, but has long been closed and for years has consisted of condo units. I noticed a "for sale" sign outside with a unit on the market. I went there from K-6th grade, so many memories in those 7 years. But, I can't go back and the neighborhood has also changed since I lived there growing up. Many houses were the same, but I don't think any of the old neighbors still live there. I drove by my old house, and my grandmother's directly across on the dead end street. Back in the late 60's and 70's when I lived there we knew most all of our neighbor's names on the street and also on the street that went through that we turned from. Along the way to school, and we walked there, we knew most neighbor's names. That has all changed. Not only do I no longer know the names of people in this neighborhood, in my current neighborhood we don't know the neighbor's names. America of days past is but a memory it seems. As an added memory I drove by Maple Hill Cemetery where many friends and family are now buried. Sobering but reflective.
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