Though it�s been many years since I looked at the world from my chinaberry tree, I have found less lofty perches from which to view my life and the lives which have become so intertwined with my own. My playful irreverence hasn�t diminished much nor has my talent for finding and participating in life�s little misadventures.
Countless writers, most notably the American novelist Thomas Wolfe, have said that you can never go home again. In some respects, they�re right. I suppose all of us reach that juncture in our lives when we are suddenly, sometimes inexplicably, drawn to the past. Perhaps the inclination to return is simply a nostalgic trek to an earlier time when life seemed simpler. Maybe the attraction is a much stronger, almost frightening, urgency to return to that time in our lives when we all experienced, possibly for the first time, all the genuine emotions that do indeed make life a crucible of joy, pain, love, loss, warmth, cold, and freedom.
Apparently, there is something about middle age which makes the need to recapture at least a little of the past most powerful. Until I approached fifty, I still thought of home as a place to leave in search of my own dreams. In any case, I seem more drawn now to those occasions at which the participants and spectators are people from my past. Each time I return to Mount Vernon for a reunion, a craft festival, or a sporting event, I look about carefully at the sea of faces. I almost expect the people from my past to have been frozen in time, as if only I have aged.
I look at young faces and realize that they are the faces of another generation, perhaps the children or even (God forbid) the grandchildren of my classmates and old friends. I expect that when I do meet people who remember me, they should exclaim, �You haven�t changed at all,� not �I never would have known you.�
When I drive by the house where I grew up, nothing looks the way I remember it, and, though some things should never change, I�m reminded that other families have lived there since I left home and each has left its distinctive mark. At least the tree where I carved my initials with my first pocket knife remains, though the bark has recovered from its wound and almost grown over my name. The chinaberry tree where I spent much of my boyhood still watches over the backyard, but it too looks so small.
Before I know it, my wife reminds me that we should leave soon to go home. Jolted back to the present, I quickly put my life back into perspective and recognize that I have created a past for my own grown children who may one day drive by the home of their childhood and marvel at how everything has changed.
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