You Really Can't Go Home Again
Mood:  surprised
Topic: Family
Back from California, and boy was I ever surprised. All those reminders I was expecting to have prompt reams of memoirs just didn't happen. I saw old friends in new settings as new versions of these people, and enjoyed the people we all are now, but the past was pretty far back to even peek at.

I stayed at the hotel where DH#3 (Jay) and I spent our honeymoon, but I was put in a newer wing and it happened to be just up the hall from where DH#2 and I had stayed once which I had mercifully totally forgotten. There was a brief moment of breathless panic when I walked into the room, and a few more memories in the middle of the night when I discovered the poor sound insulation was really no better though the desk clerk swore it had been fixed. Nope, Bam Bam and Thumper were bouncing off the head board in great detail still after all these years. I remembered how Mike and I had laughed at the sound show years before. But it was just my hotel room in a place under construction, and no more or less.

Helping my step-mother, Sal, pack up her apartment where I had lived as a teen and she has lived for the past forty-some years was almost a disappointment. There was no nostalgia there at all. I didn't feel anything of all the great times I had as a teen there. I remembered some few bad times strangely enough, but nothing really important. I was unhappy with the physical changes made by subsequent owners of the place since I moved out...missing shrubs and trees and the like. But it wasn't my home, it was just where Sal's belongings had gathered years of dust and had to be packed up, and taken to the beautiful new house.

We went to town, now more Carmelle by the freeway than Claremont by the colleges. Dinner and lunch at a couple of the old places turned new yuppie cafes was disappointing. We drove by my college dorm and saw buildings that hadn't been thought of when I was in school. I thought of friends and kind of wished I had the stamina to walk there alone, but had to accept being driven by Sal as the closest to the past I was going to get, and there wasn't much there to get close to. I can draw out some connections, but didn't need to be there on the sidewalk where I lived to bring them back. Sal had a picture of me and DH#1 - we were so young and so cute. She didn't even know he moved out the day I graduated and she gave a party for one of my dad's graduating students instead of for me. Memories often don't matter it turns out.

So the best part was seeing the present. My sister now has the horses although I was the one who loved to ride. She's got a dozen or so racehorses and the babies are darling, and she's so fun to watch teaching them to eat carrots. She had 3foundling dogs racing around her million dollar home - nice to see her falues all in line in spite of the big bucks.

My nephew, Darnell, has been the one to see Sal through her remodeling and move to her new home. For that he deserves the honors of the universe and more credit than he’ll ever probably receive. He reminds me of son-Bill in many ways, and I always really enjoy seeing him. He’s made a lovely home for himself and his two dogs are a hoot! Brownie, the Mastiff has the biggest dog house I’ve ever seen.

And so it went seeing family members I’ve not seen for ages and seeing how they were carrying on nicely with their lives. My best friend's parents (from high school years) are still in their same home,and visiting them there was the closest to a time machine experience I found on the whole trip.

So I'm back with no new great ideas for writing, exhausted, but glad I made the trip and found I'm so well grounded in the present after all.

K7