Going Home

Going Home I went home again, at last just after the mid March winter blast, as many years had slipped into the past lost too often to both time and memory aghast. Roads no longer seemed that familiar sight and scene made me quiver so much had changed, empty and dissimilar. The old haunts of my time long gone torn down and replaced for a song erased and today unknown, so wrong. Ah yes, some things, some markings remain with distinctly different looks and names. I guess nothing ever stays the same. Perhaps the old saying is more than true and there is no going back for every me and you in search of what we miss or lacked. Even the old homestead looks bland one of the few memories that still stand, remodeled, repainted, reshaped by newer hands. So swift the years have raced by, autumn, winter, spring, summer skies moved like picture shows with us aside. Some places go unrecognized trees removed with nothing left to hide only strip malls to fill the wavy tide. The buildings long displaced covered by graffiti and defaced with views of the traffic stop go race. How often have we bid goodbye to the youthful playgrounds of our lives; and as the veil is slowly lifted we finally find how blessed we were and gifted. All the places of those last fifty, sixty, seventy years once brought both happiness and tears is but a memory well marked in time right here within the heart loved and cheered. If I close my eyes, I can still see my grandmother standing beneath the tall Christmas tree at the foot of my home’s steps waiting waiting patiently, for me. Though many years have passed and the scenes change far too fast, the memories are a lasting gain are the rewards for which I aimed in having seen the world as smaller taking in its lessons learned by scholars; home is what we most treasure and it is the ultimate goal by which our lives are measured.