Going Home Again

These past few weeks, I have been dividing my time between my home in upstate New York and my mother in law's house in a suburb of New York City, over 150 miles away.  This has become wearing, especially for my spouse, as you can imagine.

But don't feel sorry for us.

Today, I had time to read the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) publication of the first chapter of "Go Set a Watchman" by Harper Lee. I had previously read it online but the WSJ had various pictures of Ms. Lee, past and present, and pictures from the movie.

In one picture Ms. Lee wore stockings with seams down the back, just as my mother did.  I remember her struggles to find those stockings as they went out of style, in the early 60's, for the last time.

It made me think about going home again.  This is what my spouse is doing - returning to his boyhood home, time and again, before his mother moves to be closer to us.  He had grown up in the house we are now packing up.  He had moved there when he was 10, and moved out when we got married in 1974.

I can't go home again.  I think I blogged about why, years ago, and perhaps I should publish that post again.  Maybe.

I thought about going home again after we exercised walked on his middle school track, and saw this sign.

We were walking on "Richard Oakley Blvd."  I turned to my spouse, knowing that when you see things named after people on a school track, many times there is an unhappy reason for it.

"He was in my graduating class", spouse said.

Later, I went online and found that, sadly, I was right.  Richard Oakley passed away in 1999.

I know, as we age, more and more of our classmates will be leaving this world.  Eventually, we will also travel down that path.

But, for now, we are still here. And, my spouse can still go home again, at least until sometime next month, when the house closing occur and someone else owns his boyhood home.

It's bittersweet.