always home

 I wrote a bit about it yesterday, home. Home is the place where we grew up. That's my thinking on it anyway but I'm sure others have a different view or meaning when they speak of home. That home is usually spoken of in the past tense. Home is where the heart is. That's an old adage that expresses a sentiment. It stirs a nostalgic experience for us all. Our thoughts drift to our childhood. But, as I said, that's my experience. I do believe the vast majority of people when asked will speak fondly of that time. Home is a safe place to go even when it is only in our mind. And now having left that home over fifty years ago it seems like such a short period of time that I lived there. The whole incidence of grammar school through graduation from high school passed by almost unnoticed by me. Always too busy thinking about tomorrow and what was to come, something better, something new, something. I had a feeling something was out there, something I just had to find. 

 There was a time when I went back home. It was then I discovered that home wasn't where I had left it. The places were the same, but the people were not. Oh, the old folks were there, a bit older than I remember but still there, familiar faces in the crowd. Many of my childhood friends and classmates had moved on, left home, in search of what was out there. No longer just a school kid, it was different living in a world remembered in childhood, but that world had changed. I hadn't changed, home had. Choices made and circumstances encountered I once again went out looking. I went looking in the same place I had before, the Navy. Finishing that up as a career, I discovered that my professional life was far from over. The thinking while serving being, once I retire. I chuckle today at the naivete of that thought. Another twenty-five years would pass before I retired. My professional life over I just do as I please these days, well, whatever the wife approves anyway. I'm at home. 

 Thoughts of home came to me as I talked to my wife this morning. She has never been to my childhood hometown and grows tired of hearing about it, I'm sure. I never tire of talking about it though. Yesterday morning we were watching the Price is Right. Now it isn't the first time I had seen this as a prize package, but it still amuses me, it's a fabulous vacation in the Hamptons! Yes, my home has become a prize on the price is right. The value of that prize was in excess of 8 thousand dollars. My home is an attraction? Yeah, it's pretty strange to think about. A playground for the wealthy. Well, it is ironic when I really think about it. Home was sold when the price was right, now all that remains is a memory of a time and place. Heritage has become an occupation for some, to add that local flavor. Caretakers of the playground. But it will always be home.