You can't go home again

Especially if it wasn't actually where you lived. But visiting is still nice.

Becoming unemployed three months after acquiring a mortgage sucks like a Hoover. Or a Dyson. Or perhaps Jenna Jameson. However, it does give one the leisure to say, "Hm. Can the boys and I come along?" when one's mother says, "Your dad and I are making the drive to visit your grandparents." And it gives one the leisure to pack a load of duffel bags, backpacks, and laundry baskets full of toys, books, and tiny outfits, borrow a portable DVD player to keep Boy Wonder happy on the four-hour drive, and go.

Visiting my paternal grandparents was always an event. We drove down every year on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and stayed through the long weekend. The train tracks are visible from the house, and my cousin and I slept on the sun porch, so we got to watch (and listen to) the passing trains. The day after Thanksgiving, my mother would head out shopping with her two sisters-in-law. After my cousin and I hit junior high and got interested in shopping, we'd go too. Before then, we'd hang around with Grandma all day, eating leftover turkey and playing Scrabble, Yahtzee, and all sorts of cool card games. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we'd all go see a movie, and I still remember the year my dad and uncle picked the movie and we saw Highlander II. My cousin and I hadn't seen Highlander, and since we had no idea what was going on, who any of the characters were, and why so darn many people had to be decapitated, we found the sequel pretty disturbing. Anyway. Last time I visited my grandparents, things were a bit different. It was 1995. I was 19 and majoring in English. Working two jobs, still living at home, and beginning to wonder if I was really accomplishing anything. I had just started dating Dragon.

My grandparents' house hasn't changed very much in twelve years. The sun porch is still there, but no one slept there; it had been converted to the smoking lounge for the duration of our visit. (Grandpa: pipe; Grandma: cigarettes; Anithe & Co.: asthma.) Reader's Digest condensed books fill the shelves, but this time I didn't have time to read any of them. (Or anything else, for that matter.) The cuckoo clock is still on the wall of the second spare bedroom, which the boys and I took over, and it still, thankfully, doesn't cuckoo. There's still a park at the end of the block, within easy walking distance.

Of course, being there feels different. Growing up, Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa's house was always a special, carefree time for me. Well, of course it was. I wasn't the one making the mortgage payments, or worrying about how to keep a kid occupied on a four-hour drive, or looking at the giant wooden play structure and wondering how many splinters my kid was going to get. Now, "carefree" is so far removed from the realm of how I'm feeling these days that I go off into gales of laughter just thinking about it. I can't help but wonder if Thanksgiving was always a special, carefree time for my parents, too, or if they were usually consumed by thoughts of work, finances, and other assorted grownup things.

And of course, we had a nice time anyway. Boy Wonder did very well with the drive, chattering away and then happily watching movies, and Baby Boone alternated between sleeping and babbling happily in my general direction. My grandparents found them both charming, and decided that Baby Boone is the happiest, smiliest baby in the world. And, although the Worry Train is running endlessly in my head, my kids weren't worrying about anything. Boy Wonder loved the long hallway in the house, the blue swing at the park, and the geese at the neighborhood pond. Baby Boone hardly cried at all, unless I left his field of vision (Velcro Baby is teething).

And the train still passed by and whistled at night, and a faint odor of tobacco smoke still hung in the air. And, for a moment, I felt comforted and secure, just as I used to feel after my cousin and I finished chatting about boys and clothes and settled down to sleep.

For a moment. And then I ruffled a sleeping Boy Wonder's hair, hugged a sleeping Baby Boone closer, and vowed to do my best to make their childhood holidays special and carefree.