Home Again?

Written By Jonathan Krogh

Dear Re-visitors:

I received a call yesterday from my sister in Canada. She had just listened to my sermon, in which I recalled how shabbily I had treated Joe, a neighbor whom my mother wanted me to befriend. Jill claimed she could not remember Joe, but after I reminded her of Joe’s sister, who was closer to her in age, she recalled, “Oh, that’s right. They were the family where the mom only wore a slip.” I remembered that too as she niched the characters back into memory. I couldn’t fault her recall; her relationship with that family never involved a trip to the church’s boiler room. My memory was more indelibly scarred than hers.

“You can’t go home again”—not only a reminder of the dangers of nostalgia, but also the title of a 1940 novel by Thomas Wolfe. In the novel, protagonist George Walker has written a best-selling book about his childhood. Returning home to Libya Hill (Ashville, North Carolina), he is greeted by disdain and hostility. It seems that the residents were unhappy with his portrayal of their character and customs and resented that the town’s little secrets had been laid bare for all the world to read. 

After returning to Omaha for a few days this past week, I recalled Wolfe’s novel, not because I have splayed open the city on the Missouri to public scrutiny through my sermon references, but because the town of my childhood and youth is now, to me, a foreign land. The purpose of my trip was to visit my eldest sister and brother along with their families. Even though their postal address reads Omaha, NE, the places were empty farmland in the days when my zip code was 68105. Both dwell half a dozen miles beyond what I knew to be the edge of the city some 45 years ago. And while I still carry some pride in being from the place known in the nineteenth century as the Gateway to the West, the Omaha I carry in memory now exists nowhere in reality. Driving east towards more familiar neighborhoods, I recalled Wolfe’s words in the thoughts of George Walker: “You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” (Ellipses in original)

I’ve wondered how our vice president is received by the old folks of Ohio after his bestseller; given the power of spin doctors and image-makers, I’m sure we’ll never truly know. The images we carry of the past serve for us as touchstones of identity which, in reality, have long ago eroded to the shifting sands of time. Home becomes a place of memory seen only in recollection—thoughts unconsciously curated to explain our quirks, our preferences, our selves. Try to dredge the present world for evidence of their existence and they will sift through your fingers; only you possess those cherished sentiments.

We cannot, nor should we, seek the ‘again times’; they cannot be restored. We’ve seen too much, felt too much, learned too much to find peace in former dispensations. Nostalgia has its place, I suppose, but I am far more content to assume I’ll be home perhaps for the first time in some not-so-distant tomorrow.

Wistful for what was and for what lies ahead, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh 
Your Pastor

Jonathan Krogh
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