You can go home again....

.... but it won't be the same.

We were up in the northeast for a few days.... we saw my husband's sister and her family, and then we drove further on to see my family. Cousins, cousins, cousins.... lots of them, plus one of my aunts is still in New York as well.

Family is family, and they stay the same... always welcoming, always happy to have a party. And that's just what we did, with a table filled with two generations of cousins... my Aunt Dolly in Florida would have just loved that day. The weather up north was hot and humid, and we were all wilting in the backyard before a rain shower made us pick up the food and bring it inside to my cousin R's dining room.

On another day, I saw my cousin T and her mother..... we all had lunch together, then T and I went off by ourselves for a few hours to catch up with one another. We drove around Queens and Nassau County for most of the afternoon before settling down in an Italian restaurant for dinner. During the afternoon, T drove me to the house where I grew up....... a quiet little street south of The Avenue (as we all called it back in the 1950s).

It was easy to find the house, but hard to grasp the fact that that little house was 'the big house on 97th Street' where we celebrated birthdays, decorated ceiling-high Christmas trees, played the piano, rode bikes to the corner, played with a white bunny in the back yard. My childhood bedroom had a porch and balcony on the second floor of that house.... the bay window is still there, the balcony is gone. The 'big' front porch where my cousins and friends used to play was so tiny that I sat there in my cousin's car and wondered how we all could fit on that small porch at the same time.

Had the house been in any other state but NY, I would have walked up to the front door and rang the bell, then asked the current owners if I could have a look around the house because I grew up there. I practiced piano in the dining room, I had a playroom filled with books and Lionel trains on the third floor, I played with paper dolls in my bedroom, and filled countless coloring books with Crayola masterpieces on the front porch swing. That was my house. I wanted to see the inside of it, but you never know in NY.... who would answer the door? Would they be as suspicious of me as I would be of them? Better not take the chance. My cousin and I just sat in her car in front of that house, hoping that one of the neighbors wouldn't call the police because there were 'two strange women parked in front of a house not their own.'

I loved that big old house. It was part of the reason I fell in love with the house we have now.... the balconies, the wooden slats of the porches, the stained glass windows. We left that house before I was ready to say goodbye to it, and actually, I never really did say goodbye to that house. I carried the memories of it no matter where I was, and finding this house we're in now seemed like a miracle. And did I mention the front yard? That yard always seemed so long and so wide when I was a kid....... looking at it last week, at its impossible smallness, just made me sad.

Speaking of miracles..... and sadness....... we also visited with Fran's family...... my friend who died of throat cancer in May, just two weeks before her first grandchild was born. We had dinner with her husband and her oldest son and his wife, and their new baby who has Fran's name as her middle name. The baby is adorable, gorgeous, beautiful, cute-as-a-button..... and I cried when I held her for the first time. All I could think of was Fran, and how she was hoping and praying to 'still be here' when the baby was born. Two weeks. She missed this baby's birth by two weeks.

I held that little baby girl for hours that night..... I just didn't want to let her go. I still have a tough time letting Fran 'go.' Before we left that night, I gave Fran's son and his wife a gift for their little girl...... my gold bracelet that my dad bought for me when I was a year old. I wore that bracelet for years when I was a kid..... until it no longer fit my wrist. When my dad replaced it with a bigger bracelet, he put the baby bracelet in his jewelry box, saving it for when I had a baby girl of my own, which just never happened. When Fran told me that her son's wife was expecting a baby, I started hoping for a little girl...... and I told Fran that if the baby was indeed a girl, I would give J & M my baby bracelet for their daughter. I kept my promise to Fran.... I held her tiny granddaughter.... I passed on my bracelet, and I hope that one day, that baby's little girl will also wear the bracelet my dad bought me so many years ago.

Missing from our trip to NY-- visiting Aunt Dolly in my grandparents' house..... the house is still there, but Aunt Dolly is now living in Florida. The house looks sad without a family member living in it. Also missing was me and Fran, sitting at her kitchen table for hours, talking and catching-up with each other's lives. I was wondering how it would be to walk into Fran's house without her being there, but her husband and son arranged to have us meet them at the son's house. It was a good idea...... it took away some of the sadness.

We also drove by the house where my husband grew up..... it was his one-and-only family home for over 50 years...... looking at it last week was also sad...... the house looks the same, but it also looks totally different. Anyone who knew my mother-in-law would know that she no longer lives there. All of her beautiful gardens are gone..... some replaced with grass, others replaced with fencing and a swimming pool. All those gorgeous roses.... had we known that the new owners wouldn't keep them, we would have dug them up and brought them to our own gardens.

Going home...... it's never the same, but it's still a good thing to do from time to time. You've got to always remember where you started out.... it gives you a better perspective on where you're going, and why you've gone in certain directions.