Home. That one word holds so much power. You hear it, and are immediately overwhelmed with the excitement of mama’s home cooked meals, dad’s picturesque fires in the fire place, and the couch you hope to become one with by the end of the Thanksgiving break. I have lived in the same town, on the same street, in the same house for twenty-one years. Once I get off the turnpike in Willow Gove, Pennsylvania, a half hour from my house, I could probably get home with my eyes closed. Until this trip, that is. Eye-opening and shocking would be an understatement.
After ten hours in a car, through five states, four large iced teas and one too many bags of chips, you could say I was fading a bit. My chatter was dwindling and my need for a nap was increasing. It wasn’t until the turnpike exit was unrecognizable, the restaurant I have driven passed since I was four was closed and the intersections I have crossed for the last 21 years were completely altered that I woke up a bit. My copilot was grasping just how much things have changed in the past three months by the fifth time I shrieked “What is going on! This place looks completely different!”
I traveled down the road that I once knew like the back of my hand to discover shopping centers, housing developments, and major road work construction taking over my once tree filled, quite small town. Chain restaurants that took a hike and a half to get to are now plopped, squeaky clean and new in the countryside of quaint Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The two lane bypass that was the biggest road within a half hour has transformed into a four lane mega highway that took my concentration to maneuver. Houses that I have always passed, and knew exactly who lived there from bus rides home from Elementary school, are now tagged with "for sale" signs or decked out head-to-toe by their new owners. I was shaken by all the changes before I even arrived in my own driveway, to my own for sale sign. I woke up the next morning and headed to my favorite diner for breakfast, it was there that the fading feeling of home really hit. Yes, it was the same waitress who knew my order and asked how my parents were, but other than her, I was in a sea of foreign faces. The high school students sitting at tables with their families were strangers I had never laid eyes on before. Even the sweatshirts they wore from the high school I attended looked so different than the one I wore--which is now four years old.
It took all these otherwise insignificant changes to make me realize, the feeling of home is changing. Things that I thought would never change, always be waiting for my next arrival back home, have now taken on a whole new dimension. The familiar is becoming more where I am and less where I came from.
On this trip back home, visit that coffee shop you grew up ordering hot cocoa with your parents, and drive down that ever-winding, tree lined road just for its beauty. Ya never know when the big old tractor will be rolling into town and “improving” what you could have sworn was your perfect home town.
