You Can't Go Home Again

 

 

 

 

Last week was my vacation.  As I often do, I visited my parents in the St. Louis area. It's actually a farm about 35 northeast of St. Louis in Madison County, Illinois.  I was reminded again as to the importance that little farm was to my growth as a human being. There I was nurtured and loved and taught the basic stuff that it takes to make it through life.

 

As important as that time was in my life, I had a couple discussions that confirmed to me that it would not have been a good thing for me to remain on that farm and in that community. My father and I were talking about the past and how at one point my father had to make the decision either to buy the farm or move. I was brought into that conversation as a 12 year old and was asked if I wanted to remain on the farm or move to a town 12 miles away and in a different school district. As the options were presented to me, I decided that I didn't want to leave my friends and that I wanted to attended Highland High School, a very good public school.

 

Obviously, we remained on that farm, I stayed with my friends and went to Highland High School. However, my father said that it would not have been good for me to remain on the farm and live as a farmer. Oh, I could do the work but my father thought that as a young boy who was more thoughtful, sensitive and very much interested in the larger world, that I would never had been satisfied with life on the farm.

 

Another discussion I had with a school mate last week (I went from Kindergarten through college with this person) said that for her to stay in the New Douglas area would have killed her soul. She was also a 'dreamer' like me. As much as we loved our childhoods and felt we were wonderfully loved and cherished in that little farming community, it was not large enough for us - not in respect to physical size or population - but in our hope and vision of our lives and of the world.

 

I appreciate my childhood (as does my friend), but I needed to spread my wings a bit and see more of the world. And that's a process that never ends. I think I have more to do and see before my flight through this world is over.