"You Can't Go Home Again"

[Slater]

This was the title of a novel by Thomas Wolfe, and Wikipedia has this entry on the topic:


"Wolfe took the title from a conversation with the writer Ella Winter, who remarked to Wolfe: "Don't you know you can't go home again?" Wolfe then asked Winter for permission to use the phrase as the title of his book.

The title is reinforced in the denouement of the novel in which Webber realises: "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."

The phrase “you can’t go home again” has entered American speech to mean that once you have left your country town or provincial backwater city for a sophisticated metropolis you cannot return to the narrow confines of your previous way of life and, more generally, attempts to relive youthful memories will always fail."


Anyone ever return to the place years (or decades) later that you maybe grew up in and felt somehow disappointed, or, conversely, that nothing has changed? Talking to guys my own age (I'm 54), some of them expressed surprise (and occasionally dismay) that their old hometown wasn't exactly as they'd left it 30 or 40 years before. I guess we all want those things to remain constant.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

My family still lives in the same suburb. My brothers friends are his friends from HS. His kids play on teams where the dad's were teammates. We live where my wife grew up, my kids go to her grade-school. It's weird to go back to visit my family since my father died and it looks the same, the people are the same, but everything is different. It's kind of like happiness in general, you really only experience it past and fleetingly in the present.

It's interesting because I understand the subtext when I visit my family and town, but I know there are all kinds of interactions and assumptions based on my wife's past that I can never fully appreciate.

My wife puts up with us going up to Grand Lake for a long weekend in the summer since it is the largest natural lake in CO and reminds me of being a kid and going to my family to Northern Wisconsin.

They say that your life changes every seven years, and that was true so far for me. I wouldn't have been able to pick where I did end up if I was given it as an option seven years before that- until now. Same house, same job, same girl, same kids for seven years+.

[SteyrAUG]

For a long time I found the opposite to be true. My home had become my grandparents house and I was always welcome. I was fortunate that they both lived long lives into their 80s and 90s and every time I returned to Iowa things were "mostly" the same.

Everything changes, but thankfully they don't seem to change as fast in Iowa. It was always a place where I could still know the name of the family that lived at every third house no matter what part of town I was in. Most of the things I grew up with were still there.

Of course now that my grandmother recently passed and the house has been sold things are different. My grandfather gave me a key to the house back in 1981 and I had kept it all these years. The current owner graciously allowed the family into the house (as he's currently restoring and upgrading it and not actually living there) since it is still full of items belonging to my family.

I grabbed the things that were most important to me two years ago when I found out the house would be sold so I really didn't find much else this time around, it was more of a "one last walk through" than anything else. I pulled out my wallet and tried the old key, it was kinda sad to realize the locks had been changed. Really drove home the point that this was no longer ours.

[Outlander Systems]

Here in Atlanta, you could leave for six months and the place would look totally different.

I went back to where I grew up in Middle Tennessee a couple of years ago, and it was literally like going back in a time machine...it was incredible. There's a lot to be said for that.

[Averageman]

The fat old lady in front of you at "Home Depot" used to be the hawt cheerleader in H.S.
That's enough to keep you from ever even wanting to go back home again.
I stop in a couple of times a year, I can't ever leave fast enough.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

The fat old lady in front of you at "Home Depot" used to be the hawt cheerleader in H.S.
That's enough to keep you from ever even wanting to go back home again.
I stop in a couple of times a year, I can't ever leave fast enough.

Luckily, they make new cheerleaders very year...



Too creepy? Why is it funny when Matthew McConaughey says it?

[BoringGuy45]

The fat old lady in front of you at "Home Depot" used to be the hawt cheerleader in H.S.
That's enough to keep you from ever even wanting to go back home again.
I stop in a couple of times a year, I can't ever leave fast enough.

Ain't that the truth. There was a girl a year ahead of me in high school I'll call Jane. Jane was gorgeous and had the most perfect body I've seen. Fast forward 10 years, I saw her name on Facebook, expecting her to be a swimsuit model or something. Holy crap, I'm sorry I clicked on her name. Her face looks about 30 years older than her, she's put on a "couple" pounds (and by a couple I mean about 200), and she generally looks like someone from the cast of Honey Boo Boo. A few girls I knew in high school have lost their looks a little bit, but the floor just dropped out from underneath poor Jane...in her case, probably literally.

But it's very true, you really can't go home, I've learned. One needs to accept that things change and so do you. For me personally: Of my four best friends from high school, only one still lives anywhere near my hometown. All the rest, including myself, have left, and the one remaining is planning on leaving too whenever he gets a new job (the school where he teaches is probably going to close this year or next). I had a falling out with one of the other four as well, and though we made a bit of a truce, we haven't spoken in 7 years. Of my entire church youth group from the years I was there, all have moved far away with the exception of a very small few. Nobody moves to our town and everyone moves out when they grow up, as there's no jobs except family farms and Ma and Pa businesses. It's weird; there's nothing ever new in the town, but it's still different then from when I remember it. Life in a sleepy town is more fun when you're a kid and things are more epic.

When I went back to visit for Christmas this past year, I was happy to see my family and the friends who were still there, but it was sad to come back to a place that I'm slowly no longer recognizing. Once my parents leave, I'll have no reason at all to ever go back. It's okay though; I'm happier where I am now; there's more opportunity, more stuff to do, and people are generally nicer. I'm okay with looking back more fondly on those times than I probably did when they were actually occurring. There's nothing wrong with escaping into memories from time to time, so long as you don't hold onto them and refuse to accept the present.

[markm]

I'm lucky to be able to ride skateboards with my son in some of the same places I used to ride 25 years ago. We go to the same skate shop and the smell of new shoes, clothes, equipment is completely unchanged. It's very soothing.

[Doc Safari]

My best friend that I've known since 1986 doesn't return my phone calls lately. I always knew he was "left of center" politically, but ever since his mom died in the late 1990's he slowly turned hardcore liberal, a la Michael Moore and the extremist left wing. We had been playing phone tag since I'm busy with my girlfriend quite a bit of the time. Then this past Christmas I had to tell him as gently as I could that because of the economy and my income being less than the year before that I wouldn't be able to afford to get him a Christmas present. I haven't heard from him since. I've left messages on his machine, but no return phone calls.

Another one of my friends died just before Christmas in 2013, and a third friend got a job in South Carolina and moved away for good.

If not for my girlfriend I wouldn't have anyone of my own age to be with.

The town where I grew up is getting to be so big now that I'm starting to want to move somewhere else. It used to be that traffic was light any time of the day or night. Now it's like the big city at rush hour.

I occasionally run into people I went to high school with. They invariably look horribly old (we're in our fifties). I never run into an old girlfriend or acquaintance and say, "Wow, she's still hot." Usually my reaction is "Man, she hasn't aged well."

[SteyrAUG]

I'm lucky to be able to ride skateboards with my son in some of the same places I used to ride 25 years ago. We go to the same skate shop and the smell of new shoes, clothes, equipment is completely unchanged. It's very soothing.

That's the important stuff.