What is it about the places we used to live, that makes us go back and look at them?
It’s something my mother does, each time she’s in Savannah, Georgia, her home town.
It’s something my father used to do when he took us to downtown Philadelphia.
It’s something my husband does whenever we’re meandering through different parts of Scottsdale. With him, though, it’s become a joke. “Yes, honey, as a matter of fact, I DID know you lived here once. You see, I pay attention to you when you talk to me, and you might have mentioned if a few (read that as EVERY SINGLE TIME WE DRIVE BY) times.”
That happened today. Robert pointed out a place where he used to live, and shockingly, it was a new place on my list of Places Robert Has Lived.
It got me thinking about this subject, though.
Why do we go back to the places we’ve been before. Is it to see if it looks the same? If it feels the same? Do we leave a little part of ourselves wherever we’ve been, and then we go back to see if we can recapture that part of our soul?
I think it’s a nice thing, in a melancholy way, to look at the places where we used to live.
I also happen to think it’s nice to look at Oh, The Places You’ll Go.
Oh, I do it too. Sometimes it is to show the kids how I grew up. Other times it is to see if my childhood memories live up to adult reality (I drove past one of my grandparent’s houses and was shocked at how small it really was)