Home

Another old Neil Diamond song:

"L.A.'s fine, but it ain't home.
New York's home, but it ain't mine no more."

There was never a bigger homebody than me......
I think I was 13 when we first ventured out of Indiana to visit relatives in Tennessee. I was homesick on that trip.
And it was worse than that: My life centered around the Valley. Getting wheels meant my comfort zone was extended as far as Greenwood at first, then eventually including Southern Naptown in my late teens.

All that changed in 1966 when Uncle Sam came calling.
Trips to my beloved home came as frequently as possible, but unless you are there experiencing the changes as they happen, returning is like visiting a foreign land. An attempt to return to my Grandparents home on Indianapolis' South Side was met with much frustration; the route there has been dissected by Interstate highways and I had to detour several times from my normal route in order to get there.

Where is home?
I've now lived in this Illinois town longer than I've lived anywhere else.
I'm comfortable here, but the strong ties........
the "have to get back home" feeling is not as strong as it was during my formative years in the Valley.

I don't know the answer to this question:
Can we ever go "home"?

Friends change.
Geography changes.
We change.
And all these changes are dramatic.

Maybe some, or most of my yearning is just a desire to return to the simpler times of my wonderful, carefree youth. But I can't imagine ever feeling about "Home" as strongly as I once did.

What a melancholy feeling!