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Emotional Roots: Can You Go Home Again?
Do you long to go home…to your childhood home? This is the stuff both dreams and nightmares are made of. Childhood is where you developed the foundation of who you are. The foundation that rocked your cradle and kept you warm and dry, also set your emotional and physical sense of place. Going back to our roots is a popular adage that authors write about, and troubadours croon about. There is an old Jackson Browne song that comes to mind, “Looking Into You.” It chronicles his experience of going back home:
Well, I looked into a house I once lived in
Around the time I first went on my own
When the roads were as many as the places I had dreamed of
And my friends and I were one
Now the distance is done and the search has begun
I’ve come to see where my beginnings have gone.
A recent EcoNesting article about heirloom items at home brought up some nostalgic stirrings about my own childhood home. Recently, I had the opportunity to drive by the house where I grew up. After my mom moved a few years ago, there’s been no reason to go back there. But on the way to visit a friend, I decided to get off the highway and check out the old neighborhood. Even though I hadn’t lived there for over 25 years, just driving around the corner had a familiar feel. The street used to be buzzing with activity. Now it seemed quiet. The house looked quieter too. It was more like looking at a snapshot–kind of surreal.
Have you been back to visit your childhood home? Or, maybe you moved back into that house. I couldn’t find any definitive statistics on the number of people who end up living back in the home they grew up in. But I did find an Associated Press article, which offers some of the reasons people do just that: “For some, it’s a good deal or a way to honor parents’ attachment to the home. Others simply feel the pull of the place where they grew up and sense…an opportunity to reconnect and sort of find oneself.” The article also suggested that “[p]eople who inherit a house can find themselves blindsided by memories and unable to part with their parents’ things. Those who buy the family home face the balancing act of putting their stamp on it without alienating Mom and Dad.” Can you relate to any of these feelings when you revisit your old home?
How about the interior design of the home? As a way to connect to your past, can you put an old stamp on a new home? I grew up in a home that was caring and fun. My parents decorating style was welcoming, comfortable and child-friendly. While not obvious to me at the time, they thought carefully about the objects they brought into the home. I have been bringing more and more of that nurturing feeling into my nest lately. While I can’t recreate what once was (and wouldn’t want to), decorating from that mid-century modern period feels right for now. Not a shrine to childhood, but more a convergence of style and emotion.
Emotional roots are a powerful reminder of where you came from and who you are now. For some, inheriting their family home brings it all home to roost. For others, family heirlooms are the connective thread. Others find a totally new separate sense of place is the healthiest to come home to.
How about you? Have you gone back to your childhood home? Do you live in your childhood home? Is your current home inspired by your emotional past?
Ronnie Citron-Fink lives in New York with her husband, two children (when they come home to the nest), two dogs and a cat. Ronnie is a teacher and a writer. She has been a contributing writer for Family Fun magazine. She currently writes articles about education and home design. Her writings are in four books including Family Fun Home and Some Delights of the Hudson Valley.
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add your comment »My home was special for me first and foremost because of my family. It was modest and my mother made it nurturing and secure. But secondarily, it was the neighborhood it was located in that had the greatest impact on me. We had a park across the street that became my private escape to nature, my school was just around the corner, and the corner grocer, bakery, meat market and vegetable stand was less than a block away. Even the bus stop was only half a block away. Everything we needed could be reached by walking. When I last visited the neighborhood, everything was as it had been, except for the corner grocers. They had all gone out of business and now, everyone in the neighborhood had to drive to the BIG super-market in another neighborhood. We need to find ways to bring that walkable convenience back so that every trip for just a loaf of bread is not dependent on a declining resource - oil. Winston Churchill once said that "We shape our buildings and afterwards, our buildings shape us." To that I would add we also need to shape our neighborhoods better than we have been and hopefully, then our neighborhoods will help shape us.
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Home is where your family is - especially one's parents. I have two home towns - ten miles apart, neither having more than 250 residents so it is possible to know everyone. From first memory to 7th grade; then from 7th grade on. I am the oldest of nine children and all except my daughter (VA) and one nephew (CA) live within 150 miles of each other. It doesn't matter whether we go to the largest home in the family or rent the local hall when we get together, there are now 62 persons in three generations (Grandma made the 4th generation until 10 years ago and all but the youngest remember her) and we're happy.
The home town is sad - a Post Office, part-time restaurant, Senior Diner lunches at the local hall, and two churches. Not one car is parked on "Main" after dark. There are only a few children (babies - Senior High).
But once in Mom's home (Dad's in the closest nursing home 20 miles away), everything is much the same - loved and told "it's time to go to bed" (I'm 63!). Siblings call often, E, & facebook.
We have whole family get-togethers in the summer, at Thanksgiving, and at Christmas. It's very easy to fall into the same roles we had as children, but we're getting to know each other as adults/grandparents and to stay close to the next generations. We all try to remember hugs and "I love you" with every call and every good-bye. After Dad's stroke, we know how easy it is to lose that special touch.
I live 100 miles away but we never left.
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Returning to the old hometown after many years may very well be a disorienting visit, especially in areas that have experienced urban expansion.
I live less than 20 miles from the childhood home and have visited the area hundreds, if not thousands of times. Because of this the change has been gradual. If I were to return after a 40 year absence it would be painful, I think.
Even so, it can be a melancholy experience as familiar places are torn down. Two of the three homes I lived in have been razed. One site is now the local insurance office and the other is part of the parking lot for a large discount store. Perhaps there are places that maintain their "history" but the American Midwest where I grew up is not such a place.
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DEAR ALL OF CARE2...
EMOTIONAL ROOTS HOLD FOR ME THE FLAVOR OF A HOME TOWN'S PEOPLE... THE WAY THEY INTERACT AND RELATE TO EACH OTHER... IT IS JUST A FEELING AND A WAY OF LIFE...
BEST WISHES...
GERSHON...
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Ran out of space...also have that feeling about old family places like the beach community where we spent family vacations when I was a child, or my grandparents' house in western South Carolina. The beach community used to be this cute rustic place, but then it got "discovered" after Hurricane Hugo, and the place got overrun by condos and McMansions. My uncle sold his beach house there while I was in college, and he and my aunt now have one on the next island up. The old family estate on the mainland where he and my aunt used to live has also been sold (I was mad about that because that land's been in the family for centuries), and I haven't been back to my grandparents' house since my grandfather died nine years ago (partly due to my husband's work hours; what vacation time he does get we spend fixing up our house and doing things with the kids).
I've moved 14 times in 14 years as of 2006, and now that we're in our permanent house, I finally feel at home again. Sometimes I'll be out on the deck or driving around the area, and I'll get a flashback image of being at my grandparents' house as a kid-the area feels that similar. Those moments are comforting to me and help me know that I'm where I belong now. It's a wonderful feeling.
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Jacs, I know exactly what you mean! I grew up in a suburb of the DC-metro area, and several years ago I went back to the old neighborhood to see what had changed. I wish I had never made that trip. Our old house is now owned by someone else, and there's nobody I know in the neighborhood now. The old dance studio I used to go to is gone, and the bathhouse of the community pool I went to burned down years ago and has been replaced by a bathhouse/community center that is completely unfamiliar. The old malls my friends and I used to go to are now ghost towns, and the open areas I remember are now filled with housing developments and strip malls. Even the old roads I used for shortcuts have had their angles and turns changed, and the roads themselves have been widened. Nothing was familiar anymore, everything had been changed or paved over, and I kept losing my bearings. None of my friends are down there anymore, with the exception of one. Once he retires from his job (he's a county police officer), then there will really be no reason to go down to my old stomping grounds anymore. I left the area feeling dislocated, and haven't been back since.
The old saying that "you can't go home again" is true. It wasn't home anymore. Even if you are lucky enough to be able to go home again, you'll leave feeling that some maniac has snuck in and changed the locks behind you! It was truly depressing.
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Being a refugee, I know I'll never be able to go back where I was born but I wish I could. I envy people who belong somewhere. I only belong to a lost dream. It is so important to belong to a place and to have roots. There are more and more displaced people and refugees on this planet and with all the present conflicts and the future ones resulting from climate change, it will be a luxury to belong and to have roots. If you have this luxury, cherish it.
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We revisted my old neighbourhood in the Eastern Transvaal (South Africa) a couple of weeks ago. I hardly recognised my home town, let alone the street and house!
Our street is much darker now, from grown trees overhanging the road. Our house has been painted a scary green. The old marula tree is gone :-(
The town itself is awful - what was once a quaint village is now a mini-metropolis with ugly billboards and shopping malls on every corner.
As I said to my hubby "You can't go home. Either you stay and let it change around you, or you go back to a different place. But don't expect to find your old life there."
Wishing I hadn't gone ...
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