TheBanyanTree: You *Can* Go Home Again

[Pam Lawley]

I'm just not sure it's always totally worth the effort!  :(

I grew up in the same town, but I went to a bunch of different schools for a
bunch of different reasons.  We moved to North Carolina, where my dad was
newly stationed in the Army, while I was in the 2nd grade and I went to the
first school I was registered in.  It was a DoD school, but turned out not
to the closest to where my parents eventually got housing, so I went to
another, closer school for grades three thru six.  Then we moved out in town
and the new closest public elementary school also had 7th grade, and I was
registered there.  And back then they had a school dedicated to 8th graders
that I went to, and then another for 9th graders.  I finally entered 'high
school' in the 10th grade, and went there for two years.

But my senior year was another school altogether.  The town had built a new
one that was just a couple of blocks from our house, and they combined
students from two schools and tossed us together for our last year.  They
were also building a new Junior High next door, and since they didn't get
our high school completed in time, for the first semester we 'time shared'
the Junior High, with those students using it in the mornings, and we senior
high'ers going in the afternoons!!  We felt quite displaced and were totally
thrilled to come together and 'own' our school when we finally got moved
in!  Barry Manilow was all the rage back then, and we had a huge banner
hanging our first day:  "Looks like we made it!!"

Our other school loyalties were left behind and we became our own force to
be reckoned with - in our own minds!

In the thirty year since we've had a few reunions, but they were always at
hotels in town. I've never actually been back to the school.

Meanwhile, I've grown a couple of kids just a few hours away in the same
state.  (My two kids also ended up as 'service brats' with BOTH parents in
the Marine Corps.  And amazingly somehow we managed one elementary school,
one middle school, and one high school, each!!)  My daughter was in the
'guard' of the marching band that back in my day, we called 'flags'!  And
quite coincidentally, her junior year, they performed at a competition at
the same school that I had attended my junior year, both of us ending up
twirling flags on the same football field several years apart!!  I remember
that visit home - how small it all looked, and how little I remembered of
any of it!

My son is an athlete.  Baseball and football games are played with local
teams, and they've never managed playoffs any farther from home.  But
wrestling has been a different story.  This coach has them in tournaments
all season long, with Saturday travel every weekend, from November through
February.  My 'hometown' has a dozen high schools, and it's common to see
those schools represented throughout the season.  But never my graduating
high school.  We've travelled in totally different circles.  Until this
year.

This year the coach scheduled a tournament there.  Not to another school
whose tournament they were a part of, but a tournament taking place right at
that school:  Westover.  I was quite excited about the prospect of entering
the doors I'd exited 30 years ago!  Oh the memories!!

Or not.

I 'grew up' in Fayetteville.  I lived there for thirteen years, before I
joined the Marine Corps and moved a few hours away.  But my parents were
there, and it was always my 'home of record'.  Then my dad died sixteen
years after I left and my mom remarried, took off Rv'ing, and then settled
in Florida to play bingo with the rest of the old people.  (It's a joke
between us!)  Since then I haven't been through very often (though both my
siblings live in the area still), and the town is now a city and I just
don't know my way around any more.  Trees are now houses, and empty land is
now businesses.  Two lane roads are five, and quiet intersections now have
complicated stop lights.

Driving to the school yesterday, I drove my husband down roads whose names I
recognized though few landmarks remained from my youth.  And I tricked the
GPS to tour the whole neighborhood, cutting through to the high school.
When we first moved off base, my dad helped out an old friend and assumed
the mortgage on his 'ranch style tract house' - just one more in a
development of hundreds.  It was sad to see the whole neighborhood looked a
lot like a 'ghetto' now.  Most homes were in sad repair and none of the
yards appeared well-kept.  It just felt very 'hollow'.

My 'Senior High' is now just a 'high school', and the 'Junior High' next
door is now a 'middle school'.  And they've build a new building in-between,
specifically for freshmen.  I felt like I could hear my mother in myself
when I blabbed to the teachers collecting money inside the door that I was
so excited to be there, that I was a member of the first graduating class!

Funny.  The main 'atrium' inside had two sets of stairs going up.  I don't
specifically remember having classrooms upstairs, but I did remember the
stairs.  But I remembered them facing the opposite direction!  I remember
the big main office and the long counter running the width.  But that's
about it!  I know I went to basketball games in the gym, but being inside
brought back no memories.  I peeked in doors and windows, but nothing rang
any bells.  It was like I'd never been inside the building before.  And I
was quite disappointed in the trophy cases.  I went searching for awards
from back then, but they've evidently 'purged' the really old stuff.  Or the
school sucked until around 2000!  There was nothing from the 70's.  Or
80's.  Or even the 90's!!!  I only found two references to our life back
then:  a framed case with the 'letter jacket' of the school's first football
coach (1977-1987!), and a plaque stating that the sound system in the gym
was contributed by several clubs from our graduating year!   I felt better
when I realized that truthfully, I'd only attended the school for about six
or seven months total.  Thirty years ago!

But in my mind it was such a HUGE part of my life!  My high school!?!? My
alma mater!?!?  All those old friends and memories?!?!  Yeah, they're in my
head - but I got nothing from walking in the doors.

It felt a lot like having some old lover...  great memories of a perfect
relationship, only to run into them again and wonder what we were thinking!
I guess I just feel disappointment.  Like this really big event in my head
never really even happened!!  WE thought we were so important!  We were
history and we were important!!  But alas, we were nothing... a graduating
class long forgotten by our children today.

I guess this is why there's that old saying about how you can't go home
again.... But you can!  The home we remember is still there.

It just doesn't remember you.

Pam