As the old saying goes, ‘you can never go home’, but wondering whether any of you have moved back to the hometown of your childhood after many years away, and how it turned out for you.
For a number of reasons, there’s a possibility that I might be moving to my childhood hometown. None of my family live there, and I have no other connections: we moved from that town when I was ten years old, and I’m now 54!
I’m under absolutely NO illusions that the town will bear any resemblance to that of my youth. For starters, it’s quadrupled in population…whilst it was a sleepy seaside town when I was a kid, it’s now a feeder suburb for Greater Melbourne with people commuting the 90 minutes each day.
But there’s still a strange pull…and I’m interested in stories you might have!
After having lived in NYC for over 25 years, I moved back here to help care for my aging parents. My partner bought the house next door. Now both parents are gone, and relocating back to NYC has proved to be impossible. I’ve gotten too used to the space of living in a 3-bedroom house, and could never go back to an apartment.
But I miss New York terribly. It’s a wonderful place to live, if you’re young or rich. I’m neither.
I’d been gone for many years from the town where’d I’d spent several years of my childhood. And so I paid a visit to the house where I’d lived for 7 years and was surprised to discover how every thing had shrunk. The once “big” boulder near the driveway seemed less than half the size it once was, and the street was very narrow and just everything was much smaller.
I’ve been watching a lot of YT vids of Near Death Experiences and in those a lot of people get over to the other side and come back and report that over there they’d felt like they “had come home.” Maybe it’s because of so many crummy things going on in the world but that’s kinda how I feel these days, like this world isn’t really anyone’s home, their real home is in the place where they were before they came into this world.
When I visited my old home town (the one in question), I was a little hyped up and felt a bit let down when the sign welcomed me to the state only because unlike the wild and wonderful dreams preceding my visit of flying over the countryside, the topography and all was basically boring, nondescript. It seemed like there should have been a better welcome.
I think psychically at some level people have something special with the place of their birth but I don’t know how to put it in words. I am at an age where people dropping dead from heart attacks isn’t uncommon, and so for the past year or so I’ve been wishing I could take a trip back to the place of my birth and just take it in spending a week or two having that kind of fun. Doubt that I will 'cause one’s gotta have some dough, and that I don’t have.:smack:
I wish you well and bet you’ll have a blast if you go for.
Sort of I guess, but in a different way. I grew up in Brisbane but throughout my adult life moved frequently and came back to Brisbane eventually. Again I moved away again, spent 5 years away and moved back a year ago.
However, I don’t live in the areas I grew up in but I visit them and do get sort of pangs seeing the motor dealerships where my friends houses use to be. It was interesting seeing my grandparents house after 40 years.
I also took my wife back to the central Qld town where she grew up- she hadn’t been there for 25 years. She loved seeing all her relatives and there places and made it clear she would never live there again!
I bounced between New York and a college town in Indiana most of my life. I lived in Manhattan from birth to age eight, and Queens from eight to 13 (except for the year we spent in Moscow). I never really lived in Queens again, but I visited my parents a lot, and I did stay with them for a couple of months when I was between leases. That was really the only unpleasant time, because my mother treated me like a kid, even though I was 25. However, when my father was ill, and I was staying most weekends with my parents, and some week nights, to help out, because he needed a lot of care before he moved into a hospice, I was 32, and my mother treated me like a competent adult, so in spite of the gravity of the situation, it was more pleasant on a day to day basis.
I actually worked at my old high school for three years, and that was just fine. Some of my old teachers were still there. I did have sort of an antithetical experience in that if a person went back to her old high school in a book or a movie, she’d learn that a lot of the old rules she resented were really for her own good. Well, actually, I learned that now that I have some distance, and some perspective from the other side, I could say that yes, in fact, a lot of the rules truly were bullshit, and not only that, but in the intervening ten years since my graduation, it had gotten even more oppressive. I’d hate to go back now and see how oppressive it is now.
I also moved back in with my aunt and uncle for a while when my aunt was ill (she recovered), and that went very well-- I mean, it was terrible my aunt was ill, but the transition to me living there again went pretty smoothly.
So, yeah, you can go home again. You just have to be prepared for a new role. You can never be a kid again, and I think that’s what the phrase really means.
I may be finding out soon. I’m at an immediate crossroads and at 64 I have to make what will possibly be a last choice for me. So I’m looking into my options both here and there.
I left home in 1973, and my folks sold the place and moved in 1979 so the place where my widowed mother now lives was never home for me. I have driven past my childhood home a few times - hard to believe 7 people lived in that 1000 sq ft box! And the yard that I thought was so huge really isn’t! And by now, the entire neighborhood is occupied by different people - the last of the ones we knew just died a couple of years back.
Nevertheless, I have no desire at all to live there. Row houses mean too much togetherness - you could almost have a normal conversation thru the walls. Parking was horrific when we lived there, and it’s only gotten worse. I would like to see inside the house, but only out of idle curiosity. I now live nearly 100 miles away on 3 acres in a largely rural county. This is home now.
I friended one of my brothers friends on facebook - he’d moved back our the village. Why was the big question. Well fast forward a year, he’s completed the home and now his wife has left him, taking the kid. Oh dear.
It’s a very beautiful place and a bonus if you like sheep. Great for small kids and pensioners. There’s a sad little website with people looking for a lift to town on Tuesdays, trying to get a babysitter and moaning about cowdung. The place hasn’t changed since the Doomsday - I kid you not.
Well, I still live in the same city where I grew up, but across town. I still go back to the old neighborhood every so often, but it’s weird to see what changes people have made to our house.
Recently I’ve started going to writer’s coffee shop nights at a place only about four blocks away from where I grew up.
Yup. I left Anchorage when I was 20 years old and was gone for 30 years, traipsing around the globe. My present wife and I moved back up there in 1998, lived and worked there for 11 years, then retired to Oregon.
The place had changed a lot in 30 years, the biggest change being the politics and the spirit of the place. Big oil made for a lot of mean and venal people. But the country was as spectacular as ever, and the air as fresh and clean. We enjoyed those eleven years, banked our retirement, traveled throughout the state, visited my relatives often. But we realized that retiring there would be a mistake, and left with some regret.
I grew well into adulthood in my home town - which those who lived five places before they married see as lame, I know, but I believe in the essential truth of “no matter where you go, there you are.”
Anyway, I now live in a very small town famous for raising kids who go away to interesting places… and then come back to raise their kids. Sometimes to take over a family home as parents move on to smaller digs, sometimes just to buy a new place. We have several neighbors in their 40s and 50s who did just that, and are deciding what to do next as their kids finish high school.
Grew up in a small town in southwestern VA, and moved away when I was 20. I’m now 50 and in GA My parents home in VA is now mine (Mom is in an assisted living facility and Dad passed away last year). I have considered moving back there since the house is paid for.
PROs - It’s a decent house, and it’s on two acres of land. Cost of living would be dirt cheap. I could grow fresh vegetables. Nearest house is a good 200 yards away.
CONs - 65 miles to the nearest airport, a requirement of my job. Small town, and not in the good ways, it’s a small town with zero growth, and a backwards attitude.
I was discussing the possibility of me moving back there with my cousin who also moved away from the area. I was telling him my pro/con list, and he interrupted me and said “You know you are never moving back here. No way in hell. You’d be miserable there.”
Know what? He was right. I’m not that guy anymore. If I didn’t have a “free” house there, I’d never consider moving there. So now I’m looking to get the house ready to sell this summer. It just took someone else with unbiased brutal honesty to get me to see it.
No knock on anyone’s decision, just this was the right decision for me and my particular set of circumstances.
I have no desire to go back to the small town that I grew up in. I was never really happy there for a lot of reasons. The house we lived in isn’t in a popular area of town anymore, so it’s falling into disrepair, which is sad because it’s a cute house with a BIG yard.
However, I’d love to “go home” to the house my dad and stepmom lived in. I spent summers and holidays there as a kid, and lived there during college. I love that house, and picturing it in detail makes me happy and teary-eyed at the same time.
Though I don’t think I want to “go home” to that city again, either. I’ve turned into a New Englander.
In 2003 I visited my childhood home (which we still own) for the first time in 30 years. Kind of weird.
In my teens and early-20s I lived in the Antelope Valley (part of the Mojave Desert in northern Los Angeles County). I haven’t been there since dad died. I miss the desert sometimes. (Right now, the poppies are blooming.)
I don’t think I could live in San Diego again. Except for San Diego style burritos and Mexican food, it doesn’t have much to interest me. Lancaster? Yes. I could live there again. I like the open space, and it’s a great place to fly. Los Angeles? It has its appeal. But there’s a reason I moved away. I could do an extended stay there, though.
This was my grandma’s house in Fort Lauderdale. Most of my happy childhood memories are bound up in this house. Another pic
These pictures were taken in 2009, 27 years after we moved away. The new folks have built that cage around the front door and fenced the back yard, but otherwise it looks much the same. I’d love to see the inside, but didn’t have the nerve to ask. Anyway, now that I’ve seen it, I can believe that it’s still there and always will be…I’d have been devastated if it was gone.
Other than a year and a half back in the nineties, I have always lived in my hometown. My husband and I moved into my childhood home almost four years ago. It was weird. First, there was the issue of going through my mom’s stuff and getting rid of things after she died, then there was the issue of sharing my house (mine, mine, mine!) with my husband.
Once we were moved in, I would feel unstuck in time sometimes. I would come home and expect my mom’s long-dead little dog to come to the door. I became afraid of the dark again for a while because I was sleeping in my old bedroom that had monsters under the bed.
Almost four years later, we have done some remodeling and made it our house and we both feel like we belong here.
