Going Home
Last week, my husband and I went back to our hometown of Coral Gables, Florida (a suburb in Miami), for his niece’s graduation from law school. Though I’ve been back to Ft. Lauderdale to visit close friends plenty of times since I moved from there to North Carolina in 2007, I hadn’t been back to Coral Gables in over ten years. And, my, how things have changed! Needless to say, there’s more traffic, more buildings, more people, more…of everything, really. Yet, somehow, it all looked smaller. Why is that? Why is it that everything looks smaller when you revisit it many years later? Obviously, we as adults are taller than we were as children, but I’ve seen my old home town and my old home place since I grew to a total height of 5’5”, and it still seemed smaller than the last time I saw it. Perhaps it’s because those places were the center of my world at one time, but as the rest of my world expanded, those places from my childhood shrunk in importance, thus size.
It was a bittersweet thing, this going home. We went by my old high school and middle school, and down the block where my best friend used to live. We snaked through the oak and banyan tree-canopied streets lined with wonderful old Spanish and Mediterranean-styled homes, and slowly drove down different blocks trying to remember who lived where, which was especially hard since those old homes had been renovated to the point of being unrecognizable. The fact that the façade of a building could completely change over the years reminded me that the facades of all of us who lived in these places have changed, too. But the memories have not.
As we drove by my old two-story Spanish-style home, the carport was still there, only now it has decorative (or theft-deterrent) gates at the front. When I lived there, there were no gates, only an old Galaxy 500 car parked within, as well as my sister’s bike, and mine, complete with banana seats. The second-story window at the front of the house was where my bedroom was. Now it is graced with a pretty blue canvas awning, instead of the aluminum one that was there when I was. Behind that window, many of my girlhood secrets were kept, whispered in hushed voices during a sleepover with a girlfriend or two, or spoken softly into the phone to a new boyfriend – one I was sure I’d love forever. In that same bedroom, I dressed for my first day of school; first dance; proms; and finally, my wedding. A lot of changing went on in that room, both literally and figuratively.
In the front yard, our old fichus tree has been replaced with a palm tree, and though the palm is pretty enough, it doesn’t offer the kind of sturdy branches that the fichus tree did; providing the perfect perches for all of us neighborhood kids to sit on as we cooled off amidst its thick, leafy crown to escape the broiling South Florida mid-day heat. There were iguanas in that fichus tree, too, though we managed to live side by side. They were in need of a cooling respite just as we kids were.
Within the driveway were two cars that belonged to strangers, one of whom was peering beneath the hood of one of those cars. And because we knew we looked odd slowly driving past the house – as if we were casing it – my husband picked up the pace so that we wouldn’t have the cops called on us. It seemed weird to have to hurry on down the road from a place that I had hurried home to thousands of times.
At the end of the weekend, my husband and I packed up our belongings, bid our family and friends adieu, and headed for the airport. As we drove down I95, I laid my head back against the car seat and let out a sigh of relief that the long and busy weekend was behind us. “It’ll be good to get home,” I said. And then I thanked the good Lord above that I felt that way. All things considered, I realize that the old home place in the Gables will forever be the cornerstone of my childhood, but a place that is unnecessary for me to go inside of again. What it gave to me, I carry with me always: the love of the people, the security they gave to me, and the moments shared with them. Those are the things that have helped make me who I am today, and those things will never change – unlike the house’s façade, or mine.