You Can't Go Back

I was out running errands on Sunday and found myself near the neighborhood where I grew up. Except for one cousin, I don't know anyone there now (there was an almost complete turnover of neighbors while I was in college). But I decided to take a detour and drive through. I saw my old elementary school, the local park where I learned to play baseball and tennis, my old safety patrol post.

Good memories.

Next I turned onto the road my grandparent's store had been on--my parent's house and a few others were up a dirt road and over a hill behind the store. As I drove, I saw the woods I played in as a kid, the swampy area I slid on in winter and hunted tadpoles in summer, and the sledding hill!!! That thing is huge and steep--and now covered with houses. I was sorry to see the sledding had been ruined, but it was great to see the old neighborhood.

Until I saw my grandparent's store.

It's just a house now...and the owners are not keeping it up. It's a wreck, it needs to be torn down. I felt like I'd been staked in the heart when I saw it. Not a typical reaction for a good German like me. I spent much of my childhood there...living with my grandparents in the small apartment behind the store and helping to run it even when I didn't live there. It was never fancy, just a small, old store in the country. And now it's a shack that needs nothing so much as a good fire to put it out of its misery.

I was surprised this bothered me. My grandparents aren't there--my grandfather died when I was 7. It hasn't been a store since 6 months after my grandmother sold it--without her there, people saw no reason to stop in anymore. Driving past it never bothered me before.

Maybe it didn't bother me on those previous drives because I didn't look close enough to see the changes. It was no longer my grandparent's home (or my home-away-from-home), but it looked like it could be. That's no longer true. That place is gone.

I wish I hadn't seen what's there now. You CAN go back, it just won't be the same.