When the Imagination Visits Home...

There is something special about going home. It doesn't matter if you have lived a lifetime away from the place of your birth,  if you were happy there,  sooner or later you will want to go home, if for nothing more than a visit.

A magnetic pull from some invisible force appears to draw a person home, if not physically then mentally. Either way the trip is the same. It is a walk into the yesterdays of a lifetime ago.  Today was such a day for me. I stayed in Missouri but my  thoughts were in Kentucky. They go there often, visiting places I used to play. Often I spend a few hours writing memories of loved ones and old friends. I ramble around in people's lives who happened to touch my life in some way. When this happens I remember voices, smells, colors and the music of my youth.

I loved living in the small, old shotgun house with my mother and my grandparents.  The picture above was taken after Mama sold the home place to the Methodists church. It may have been taken the last time Mama visited the house. Mama loved that house too. Mamamae had died the year before. She lived a long good life.  Granddaddy died suddenly when I lived in Yuma, Arizona. He was only 62 years old. I have already lived 2 years longer than he did.  At the time I thought he was old. Now when I look back I think he was so young and missed the last part of a long happy life. Memory and imagination change with time. I wish he could have lived longer.

As I look at the photo I see where the aluminum glider and rocking chair sat on the front porch for years,  are gone. They were placed in my back yard for about 20 years. Eventually rust and old age accompanied them to the dump.  The wooden flower boxes that were filled with petunias every summer are gone from the porch. I have no clue what happened to them. The beautiful maple tree that stood in the small front yard is still there in my imaginary trip. I thought it was the prettiest tree in Clinton when it changed colors in fall to a magnificent red. 

The house was torn down and turned into a parking lot. The maple tree had to be erased also to make way for cement and progress. That is just the way life goes. We can't keep anything forever. We, the human race,  reside in a constant state of letting go. That is the way it has to be because somewhere,  someone else is waiting to make new memories where our old memories lived.