The author Thomas Wolfe planted this sentiment in our cultural landscape where it took root and flourished into a uniquely American meme articulating the transient essence of home.
Not to belittle the plight of the homeless – “houseless” may be more apt – but we are a nation of homeless souls. We are a nation of nomads. To leave home is to assert one’s independence and maturity.
We go away to grow up. How do we criticize those still living at home? We tell them to grow up. To stay home is a bad thing. We seek our fortunes elsewhere. We move to where life or work takes us.
America has never stayed home. Horace Greeley told us to go west and we did and we haven’t stopped going west – and east and north and south. We seem to need to be somewhere else. How many of us can say that we live in the town where our parents and their parents were born and raised?
Perhaps this self-imposed exile – this incessant search for the better life elsewhere – is why we long for the good ol’ days.
Bad things never happened in the past and if they did they weren’t so bad after all because memory is a well-intentioned con artist. The better things are always in the past, that is why reminiscing wistfully is such a sweet sorrow. Because the first kiss was the sweetest, the first caress the warmest, the first sip of whiskey, the most intoxicating, the first sunset, the most breathtaking… The second time is never as good as the first. But, of course, the past was no better than the present and many times it was worse. To revisit is to revise.
From another vantage point, home is a state of mind, a meld of time, place, and people and unless you can travel in time, indeed, you cannot go back home.
You can return to there but never to then. You can return to a house, but not a home. You can go back to the town, but not the hometown. Still, you can replace the there and then with here and now. Home thus becomes whatever you want. You carry it with you. It is in your heart.
It is not a matter of faith but fact that, as the song says, “these are the good ol’ days.”
Maybe it’s a father daughter thing.
The best years of my life – bar none – were raising my two daughters in our Long Island, NY home, changing diapers, wiping runny noses, kissing away boo-boos, shooing away boogeymen, helping with homework, persuading them that denying them their every wish was an act of love. (To spoil is an act of selfishness not love.) If I could, I would live those years over and over again. But I cannot go back to that home, so I have had to devise replacements for runny noses and boo-boos and being the smartest, funniest man in their lives.
So it is that whenever I visit my daughters, Juliana and Teddy, in NYC borough of Queens, I cherish the past but live in the present.
Home this past July was a room at the quirky Jane Hotel which overlooks the Hudson River in the far West Village. Once settled in, my daughters and I met at Union Square and, after hugs and kisses, our threesome forays began.
Our first stop is always food.
As I am notorious for my appetite, we were soon seated at John’s of East Twelfth Street, a smallish bistro noted for its genuine Italian fare. Too much food forced doggie bags that I toted to the Ethel Merman Theater for Alan Cumming in Macbeth. In anticipation of seeing a “homeless” being, I held on to the bags. As we stood in line, I was reluctant to toss perfectly good food when a man came looking for empty cans and bottles in a nearby litter barrel. I offered the food as graciously as I could without insulting his dignity – he was, after all, working for a living, not looking for a handout. He graciously thanked me, perhaps sensing our mutual predicament. Juliana and Teddy were happy that Dad had insisted on taking doggy bags and holding on to the last minute. Home.
I thought Macbeth was excruciating, but the girls loved it and explained Cumming’s modern interpretation to Dad who then had a better appreciation, but still thought it two hours of his life irretrievably lost.
Those who once looked to me for answers were now the teachers. Home.
We parted for the night, but not before they taught me how to hail a taxi and advised me on how much to tip (you can never offend by over-tipping) and how not to be taken for a ride (if you see the same landmark twice, you are). Home.
Sunday morning came hot and beautiful. From outside the Jane I could see the World Trade Center Memorial Building. It is an impressive and emotional sight. After services at the non-denominational Forefront Church Sunday where Teddy is a greeter, Pete’s Tavern (established 1864, the oldest bar-eatery in NYC) served us a wonderful brunch. Val, one of their several close NY cousins and a sweetheart to boot, joined us. They are close to cousins from both sides and actually share an apartment with cousin Melissa, an immigrant from Groveland who, like her Uncle, has come to love New York. This warms the cockles of my heart. Home.
In the midday heat – a scorcher – we made our way to popsicles in Central Park. Then crabbed our way through the Bastille Day mob on 60th Street between 5th and Lexington Avenues. Unfortunately, the heat and sardined bodies denied our participation in this celebration of food and peoples francophone. But we were all denied together as father and daughters. Home.
The heat was finally getting to us. It can be like a convection oven in a New York summer, but you rarely remember that. Before they headed home, Teddy and Jules invited me to dinner at their apartment in Astoria. Cousin Melissa would be home and her brother, Cousin Michael, was visiting from Boston. I agreed.
Two hours later, I stepped outside The Jane to walk to the subway that would take me to their home in Queens, but the late hour and heat forced me to retreat. I called the girls and begged off and said my goodbyes. In person would have been better, so much better, but you don’t always get what you want. Even when you’re home.