Going Home

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They say you can’t go home again, but I’m about to prove them wrong for the umpteenth time: I’m heading for Nevada, Missouri, to visit my mother for a few days.

I do this about a dozen times a year now. Mother is eighty, and I worry about her. Not as much as I used to, however, because she now has a boyfriend, Bill, who takes her out to lunch every day and helps her run the few errands that occupy her time. And my brother lives with her. Even though he works long hours, I know that if anything were to happen, he would be there, eventually.

So, I really go back because I enjoy her company and because the visits are so pleasant. I don’t have to feel responsible for anything while I’m there, although I try to do the dishes a few times and help her some with the notebooks she is assembling about the lives of my father and the two brothers who never had families to collect their mementoes.

But I don’t go back to visit my hometown. I have almost no interest in Nevada. I didn’t have much when I lived there. I was always intent on getting old enough so that I could go to college and get out of there. That’s such a common thread running through so many teenagers’ lives.

Now I wish I had been less dismissive of the community activities that mark the passage of the years in a town like Nevada. I never participated in the Little Miss Bushwhacker Days contest; I never entered anything into the County Fair contests; I never even read the newspaper.

Part of that was because I had so few friends to draw me into such activities. I was always the odd duck, the girl everyone thought was stuck-up, when I was really only a peculiar sort of shy. As one of five children, I didn’t miss having friends much and so I never learned how to make them. I had my brothers and sisters to pal around with – at least until my older brother and sister went off to college. Then I was left with two brothers years behind me, who didn’t really want to have much to do with a sister.

So I have no friends there to catch up with. The most I do is ride around the square and try to remember which stores have closed and opened since the last time I was there. My husband actually does a better job of that. He is more observant than I am, and he remembers what he notices. So he tells me what has changed, and I say, “Really?” and nod like I’m interested.

But I do notice what has changed in Mother’s world, and I am interested in her news, even though so many of our conversations repeat themselves. How my sister, Sharon, doesn’t listen to her and acts like she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. How Sharon’s sons are struggling with their finances and what Mother has done to help them out. What funny things the great-nieces and great-nephews have said recently and how they are doing in school or pre-school.

It’s comforting to know that some things never change, that home is still home and will be until Mother’s gone. At which point I won’t be able to go there any more.

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While I'm in Nevada, I won't have access to e-mail, so no blog from me until Saturday.
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