Andrew Kesterson

"Love God. Live Righteously. Die Well."
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# You Cant Go Home Again

2026-06-30 Philosophy 845 words

## What is home?

Is “home” a place? A people? A feeling?

For a long time as a young man, when talking to people, I might say “… back home …”; I would be talking about the Ozarks mountain area around Marshfield, Missouri, where my mother, father, brothers, and extended family all lived. I would talk about “the old Home place”, and it would refer to my grandfather’s home and farmland, or the home I was born in and the land it was on, or the home my great grandfather built and the large acrage it sat on, all of which were right there together in the same little valley around the same creek, populated by the same people that had been constant my whole life.

When my wife and I were young, stacrossed lovers, our relationship began as a long distance relationship. When we were upset or lonely, we would tell each other, “I want to go home”. For us, home was with each other - that’s where our hearts were, and that’s where we wanted to be. Our song was Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”.

My children jokingly refer to their mother (sometimes) as “the Spawn Point”. We have moved them around so many times during their lives that I honestly don’t know what “home” really means to them. We would never live somewhere more than a few years before uprooting them for various reasons; “home” was probably a transitive thing for them, and I was gone at work (and other less savory places) so often, that for them, the only constant idea of “home” was their mother.

> "Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children."
> --William Thackeray

Once we had children, when I said “home”, I meant wherever my house was where my wife and children lived. Home was something that I had made with my wife (or, mostly, that my wife had made) for our children and each other.

Today I say “Marion County Georgia is my home”, because that is where I have chosen to plant a flag and carve out a life for my wife and I as our children transition in to adults. That is the community that I have chosen to claim as my own (for better or worse…). But even now I might say “I’m going back home to Missouri to see family”, to reflect that while Marion county is my home, my ancestral home, my point of origin, is back in the Ozarks.

Home is one of those words that can have multiple meanings, even simultaneously, and may mean completely different things to different people, or even the same people, at different times or in different contexts.

## You Can’t Go Home Again

There’s an old saying that a man can never step in the same stream twice. It’s not the same water - the water keeps moving. It’s not the same streambed - rocks have moved. Animals and little water critters have moved, born and died. It may not be the same season. And they are probably not the same person, either; they have almost certainly changed. It’s very close to another idea - you can cup your hands and catch water, but you can never catch the stream.

So it is with going home. When we leave home, we have these memories, these crystallizations that we carry around with us. That is “Home”. Then we go back “Home”, and we see that the crystallized memories don’t quite match up. The people have changed; they’ve had the audacity to go off and live their lives without us. They may not look or sound or act the same. Maybe they got married, had kids, got divorced. The place has changed; shops have opened or closed, homes and barns have fallen to disuse or decay, cattle no longer graze where they used to. Fences have moved, property has changed hands, and now you can’t walk the same places you used to. Culture has changed - you don’t hear the same music, or get the same “vibe” from a place that you used to. There are more stoplights than you remember. Your favorite restaurant has closed or changed hands. Maybe someone critical to your concept of “Home” has passed on, and no matter how hard you look, no matter what phone numbers you call, that connection is simply impossible to make - they’re just gone forever.

“Home” is a concept that is fragile, easily shattered, and devastating to reconcile with the reality of the passing of time.

Some people manage to accept this in a healthy way. I don’t think I am one of them. For me, coming home hurts. I keep hoping that if I rip off the bandaid one more time, it won’t hurt this time. That hasn’t happened yet. Maybe some day.

> "I am he who can dissolve the terror of being a man and going among the dead. I am morphine for a wooden leg."
> --James O'Barr

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