Going Home

Last weekend I packed up a few of our worldly posessions into a small U-Haul truck and started the trek from Jacksonville, Florida to Finksburg, Maryland. Yes, I grew up in a place called Finksburg. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

My parents have been gracious enough to let us store a few things at their house while we are serving overseas, so it was my responsibility to drive the truck filled with these few precious items to their house for storage. There was Kellye's wedding dress, the grandfather clock that Barry Bishop built for us when we moved into our house, the director's chair that was given to me by a group of special students on my 30th birthday, 17 years of snow globes (at least one for every year we have been married), lighthousees and bison, video tapes of the kids and, of course, boxes and boxes of photographs that have frozen in time the memories of nearly 40 years of life in the United States. It was as hard to stack the boxes in the garage as it was to pack a lifetime of memories inside of them.

I haven't been back to the house where I grew up in more than 13 years. As our family grew it became more practical for Mom and Dad to visit us than it did for us to visit them. I was stuck by how so many things can be exactly the same...but different. For example, I almost drove right past the house. Although it was exactly the same as it was when I lived there, the trees had grown so much that I could barely recognize the front yard. Walking around inside the house was like this too. There were places in the house that I am sure had not changed one single bit since I lived there. The bookshelf behind the couch in the family room was exactly the same as it was more than 20 years ago. There are still at least two rotary phones in the house. And, Dad still won't break down and have cable television installed in the house. But while some things are exactly the same, many thngs are different. What once was my bedroom is now an office with barely enough room to turn around in. The back yard has recently been re-landscaped and is hardly recognizable by me at all. And, while I can't watch The Discovery Channel, I can get a wireless Internet signal for my laptop computer anywhere in the house. I suppose all of this is a reminder that we are all a little bit like the house of my childhood. There are somethings that will always remain the same. However, as we age and mature, there are parts of our lives that change. Sometimes we become more modern. Sometimes (like Dad's rose bushes) we adapt to the landscape around us, and sometimes we have areas of our lives (like the back porch) that need to be torn down and reconstructed.

I enjoyed my brief visit at home. I could write so much more just about the 12 hours that I got to spend there. It was wonderful. The whole family will be spending a week there at the end of July and I am looking forward to sharing some special parts of my childhood with my family. But most of all, I am looking forward to sharing my parents with my family. While not every moment was golden, I lead a pretty good childhood and the man I am today is largly due to the upbringing my parents gave me. I hope that in the week we get to spend in Maryland that my children will not only enjoy Baugher's french fries, Hoffman's ice cream, Ledo's pizza, steamed crabs, and Utz potato chips, but they will see the world in which I was raised and the people who raised me.

Thanks Mom and Dad.

Blessings,
Marc