You Can Never Go Home

"You can never go home" is a paradox.  It is how I try to think about each day.  I try to live in this moment.  It is more true, if you move away from your hometown, as an adult.  I, however, deliberately moved back to my hometown after several years away.  I don't know what I was expecting, and for sure I wasn't stupidly thinking I was coming home to the same place I left.  I came back with kids, 10 years of marriage, and a university degree.

Now that I have been back for several years.  My hometown not only shaped me as a child, but is my home again.  I struggle with how sentimental I should be about my story, so far, and my stuff.  Sometimes I am very sentimental, and then I move and throw/give all my stuff away.  We are in a lean time for stuff, and a rich time for people.

At my church, my sister, mom and I set a table for a tea.  Tea is my thing, but tea settings aren't so much.  Rules and etiquette make me feel rebellious.  Groups of women make me feel shifty.

Like I said, I got rid of all my stuff (or never had any), so I don't have tea settings, which is fine with me.  We set the table with my grandparents tea service from the 50's.  I cut flowers from the yard to decorate, and I didn't compare how homespun our table was to the fancy tables nearby.

As my sister and I were sitting at a table full of contented ladies, I unexpectedly felt very sentimental.  All these people were enjoying one another partly because of my grandmother's stuff.  We could have been eating from plates made in india, sold at Ikea for $2, but we weren't.  It was an unusual, and mysterious feeling for me.  It felt like home.