You Can’t Go Home Again

Monopoly House

Last night, I had a special evening. It was the first Passover Seder, and traditionally, it has just been my family and our family friends. This year, I invited my coworkers, and B invited his friend from Mozambique that also lives here. It was a very multicultural experience.

It got me thinking about how when we used to visit my parent’s old neighborhood of Far Rockaway, New York (Queens, for those of you not in the know). Something that is a familiar backdrop becomes an unfamiliar storyline. My mother used to look out the car window at the streets where she grew up, and say “it’s true what they say – you can’t go home again.”

I felt a little like that last night. The house was there with all the usual suspects, the same food, but we are all so different. The people I brought reflected a new and different chapter, and for the first time I felt a little bit like a guest in my parent’s house (except for the part where before I left, I made sure to steal a deodorant from the closet because I knew they would have extra new ones.)

I brought people I work with – definitely different than those days of spending my week off of school lounging around and doing very little while enjoying my spring break. Remember things like spring break? I guess I was a bit nostalgic for the way in which life seems to get more exciting and more difficult as we age.

I also couldn’t help thinking about what it would mean a year from now. Where will I be a year from now, and how will my relationship with my parents be? Will following a different path cost me this little blanket of security, even if it has changed a lot over the years?

Jewish holidays focus a lot on the feeling of warmth, of food, and of tradition. As we age, our concepts of these change. They either become more a part of our life, or less. Some of my friends are still leading the same lives that they were in high school. They haven’t ventured far from that track – and I have to admit, it confuses me. I’m learning to respect it – as I see how difficult change is. But I think that a person deserves the right to both.

Tasting my mother’s soup and brisket is a part of who I am, but there’s also that part that has been forever changed from the child I grew up as. It’s the embrace of both that really makes a whole person, a whole – and new – me.

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Challenges, Friends | Beth Oppenheim March 30, 2010

4 Comments to “You Can’t Go Home Again”

By Mehnaz, March 30, 2010 @ 4:37 pm

Great post Beth!

I can completely relate to what you say. Every year for my birthday my mum makes fried chicken and chips. Ever since I was 8 years old, that’s how we’ve commemorated my birthday. And since my sister started baking, she makes me some form of cheesecake for dessert.

Every year it’s the same thing, with 3 of us gathered for birthday dinner, and every year it’s just a little bit different. Qualitatively that memory is formative of who I am. But I know that as I grow and maybe next year, I won’t be home for my birthday. I might be somewhere else. I might still have fried chicken, but maybe I’ll have to share it with someone else.

I think change is inevitable whether your life has changed b/c of location or not. Sometimes change is only subtlely detectable. As we build our own lives and our stories change, these experiences change too.

Happy Passover
By Kirk Kittell, March 31, 2010 @ 10:22 pm

I like that Thomas Wolfe line, though I’ve never read the book: “You can’t go home again.” Even if home stayed the same, I guess we see it through a different lens each time we return. I generally only make it home in the winter, when the trees are bare and all of the yards and fields that looked so big, well… I can see right through them now. I like to go home for the people, but the place itself stomps on my childhood recollection of the place.

Anyway. Enjoy your whole and new you.

(Found via your featured post on Brazen Careerist, by the way)
By Beth Oppenheim, April 1, 2010 @ 9:49 am

Thanks for taking the time to stop by, Kirk!
By Grace Boyle, April 3, 2010 @ 6:55 pm

Lindsey wrote a great post on this very notion (and it helps she lives abroad in Paris): http://www.lostincheeseland.com/2010/01/saying-goodbye-to-milk-cookies-notion.html.

I really resonated with what you had to say, as well as what she said. I don’t live near family and haven’t for a long time. It makes me sad but also shows that we’re constantly recreating our life. Furthermore, I definitely recognize how important it is to have those memories and traditions. Although going home really never is the same, once you really leave it, it still remains as a memory