You can’t go home again; often I have wondered what Mr. Wolfe meant by this now famous saying. Although I have never fully read this acclaimed piece of American literature, there is something that is so curious about the title of this book. What does it mean to say you can’t go home again?
I am the epitome of what you would call a “home body”. I find that I make it a point to go home almost any chance I can get. Home, what a loaded word. It has a different meaning to everyone. To me it means so many things. Automatically I think of my mother. Home embodies her. There is a sense of security that you can't find anywhere else. It’s the comfort of familiar scents. Fresh scones and wheat n’ bread, Sunday roast sizzling in the oven, sausage rolls, newly cut hay. The shelter of your cozy bed as you ease your head down for the night. The dancing of lace curtains as a gentle breeze comes through an open window. Warm glow of a crackling fireplace. Laughter and harmless teasing from older brothers. Family meals together. Dad’s love of butter. The wagging of tails. The sound of gravel under my feet as I walk towards the front door.
But back to the posed question; you can’t go home again? It really only hit me the other day what this truly means. Whenever I make the long drive away from home, down our gravel lane you can still usually find a tear running down my face. Usually this is due to the image of my mother in my rear view mirror getting smaller and smaller as she continues to wave until I’m out of sight, but there was something more the last time. Will all those dear thoughts of home ever surface in the same moment again? Can any of it really be captured and held on to in the same way? The cruel reality of it all is that home is something of a fleeting memory. It’s over before you know it. Sure there will always be a great treat in going home but it’s just not the same as it use to be. Both brother’s now live hundreds of miles away as well as myself. Yes there are joyous reunions of holiday and summer visits but they are always hindered by the realization that this moment must pass. Those few years that we all had together can never be recaptured in the same way my memory accounts. Years go by in a blink and in turn so many changes.
Perhaps I don’t truly grasp the true understanding of what Wolfe was trying to get across to his readers. That can only be brought to light by finishing his book. But I have an understanding of what it means to me. You can’t go home again, so you better hold onto those precious memories.
"Dear Fox, old friend...
thus we have come to the end of the road that we were to go on together... and so farewell.
But before I go, I have just one more thing to tell you: Something has spoken to me in the night, burning the tapers of the waning year; something has spoken in the night and told me I shall die, I know not where. Saying, "To lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth- whereon the pillars of this earth are founded, toward which the conscience of the world is tending- a wind is rising, and the rivers flow."
You Can't Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe
No comments:
Post a Comment