You Can Go Home Again

My best friend from childhood recently moved back to our old home town of Owen Sound after living the other side of the country and then Ireland. She is an artist and writer of great skill and talent.

The last few years we had reconnected on line we had last seen each other in person (apart from a chance meeting on a bus in suburban Oakville) when we were twelve. In fact we were even younger when I was sent off to boarding school in the UK and had to part.

When I received the e-mail that she was a mere three hours away it was all I could do to prevent myself hopping in one of my cars and driving off to see her that very day. Finally  I able to take a weekend off and drive up highway six to my old home town. I say home town but I only lived there for four years, but it is that Norman Rockwell neighbourhood that is forever associated in my mind as defining childhood.

I was a little apprehensive about visting my friend and seeing childhood landmarks again, worried that it would be an emotional overdose of nostalgia. I was not worried about how she would accept me, beside my family she was one of the first people I told and has been very supportive. One of her close friends is F to M.

I left early on Saturday and made the 120 mile journey (takes three hours as there is no major highway there and #6 passes through many small towns with traffic lights and very low speed limits to contend with). 

Later that morning I met her and her two beautiful daughters. It was like the thirty years apart evaporated and we talked and talked. Later on we drove by our old school, the distance to school and our homes seems to have shrunk with age. The long walk to a child's eye was in reality a few blocks. Everything looked remarkably the same even the old corner store we were forbidden to visit during school hours still stood on the corner. Didn't occur to me then but I should have gone in to buy a Pixy Stix (powdered candy in a paper straw) for old times sake.

We stopped at the house my father had built on a quiet crescent. It was a great street to grow up on as there were lots of other children the same age. The crescent was quiet and our playground, bike races, roller skates, late night games of hide n' seek and in the winter elaborate snow forts and pitched snow ball fights. I had already started to notice cars, a friends older bother had a modified Corvair, a neighbour a Corvette Stingray. The night everyone on the street came out to see a neighbour bring home their new Thunderbird. 

We pulled up to house in my Seville, I asked the couple gardening out front if I could take a picture as "I used to live here." Well you must be a Chadwick how is your father does he still have the Rileys!  Come on in and have a look at your old room! I was stunned! Turned out I was talking to the daughter of the people who bought the house from my father. The house was very much as I remember it though my room had shrunk…weird that.

In the photo you can see right hand window, which was my room, somewhere there is a photo from the local newspaper of Susanne and I looking out that window at the record high( touching the second story window) sun flower my mother grew. 

We talked for a while and found out that there were still some families left from when we were there, including the parents of my good friend David. I knocked on the door and introduced myself as an old friend of David and his sister. They remembered my family but I could see they were thinking didn't they have two sons…don't remember a daughter. They were very nice and asked me in for tea. It seemed like I had only been away a month, time ceased to have any meaning.

I was exhausted after the visit to my old neighbourhood, too many emotions. Back at Susanne's we took it easy and talked, amazing each other at the commonality of our taste in movies, books, cars  and other esoteric interests. Sunday was spent exploring downtown and seeing which stores were still in operation from our childhood. Enjoying a Blizzard at the Dairy Queen, a new experience for her girls as apparently DQ has not made inroads into Ireland. 

Despite our long periods of separation there is a special friendship that distance and time has been unable to diminish.

I became quite emotional on leaving, I did not want to say goodbye for another two to three decades, an irrational fear, we made plans to visit again in the summer perhaps me bringing up my daughters as well.

Johnny Horton singing, Comin' Home and a TV ad for the new Thunderbird: