You can’t go home again

Obscured by the gray building in the distance and across Interstate 77, sits my first house. I can’t see the house from my hotel window, but I know it’s there.

It is a Dutch colonial with a gambrel-style roof. Most people who see the house say, “It’s the Amityville Horror House.” It is small and noisy, and sometimes unnerving if one happens to wake up at 3:30 AM. It was the host of many good times and a few bad ones.

It is just a house, though. A home is something different.

As cliché as it sounds, I’ve always carried “home” in my heart, where I refuse to allow it to be obscured by times of sadness, an occasional, and sometimes startling, pre-dawn awakening, confined to a structure, or limited by time or geography.

I’m in my hometown today, but it’s not my home.

 

 

 

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