You can't go home again. It's actually the title of a Thomas Wolfe novel published (after his death, and using his notes) in the 1940s.
It's also come to be a well-known expression, full of nostalgia and making a point about change. We all have childhood memories, some pretty accurate, but others glossed over by the rose-colored glasses of time.
When I go home, I will often drive by the house where I spent my childhood. At first I'm taken aback by how different it looks. Why would anyone take out those beautiful rhododendrons along the front window? Oh, and they took the screens off of the big screened in porch at the side of the house and turned it into a deck. All signs that although you can sort of go home again, it's not the home of your memories. In fact, it's someone else's home, where they've made their own mark, erased some of the embodiment of your very childhood, turned it into what will be fodder for their own future reminiscences. And so it goes . . . and so it goes.
Covid, of course, took a wrecking ball to the meaning of that old saying about not being able to go home again because, quite literally, we could not. What a shift there was in the paradigm. Priorities became crystal clear. Memories, landscape, it all took a back seat.
I don't like repeating the same stories on this blog because it's my hope that many of you read it often and I don't want to leave you rolling your eyes and thinking "yeah, yeah, you told us already." But I'm going to have to give the backstory here, bear with me.
My older son went to college an hour away. He's local and I am (well, most of the time) grateful. My younger son went to college 10 hours away, and it was a tough 4 years of missing him. When he graduated, he had job offers in different states but the offer with the best company was right here at home. I'm not going to lie, I was more than a little excited. He got a loft downtown and was about 30 minutes away. Not too close and not too far.
But after just one short year of having him back home, his company moved him 8 hours away. It was bittersweet because although he'd be gone again, Boulder is a young, vibrant, fun area, perfect for him. He moved on September first.
A few months later we were together again, I flew him home for Thanksgiving, but shortly later we started hearing about Covid. It quickly became clear what a threat this disease is. He started working from home, I started staying home.
With him not going into the office, I wanted him here. He knows no one there, and you can work from home anywhere. But the numbers sky rocketed in Boulder, then here, then in both places and it just wasn't safe. I spent months frustrated, shaking my fist at the stars. For endless months I could have been cooking for him, baking for him, celebrating every minute he was here, were it possible, were it safe.
The hard truth was, though, that for the first time ever, I did not know when I would see him again. Thanksgiving would be an entire year.
Celebration Cupcakes
There is such a huge difference between not going home knowing that you can versus the knowledge that you cannot. Can is hope, possibility. Cannot is frustration, despair.
It wasn't safe to fly, we didn't know what the weather would be the week of Thanksgiving so we didn't know if he could drive. Through
the months he started working once a week, and just as that was about
to be twice a week, the surge in Covid cases forced them to work
exclusively at home again. He self quarantined, we self quarantined and a little over two weeks ago, on a 70 degree fall day, he drove home.
You can't go home again? How much has changed is meaningless, the dissolution of rose-colored memories is meaningless. Home, ever changing though it may be, is where your family is.
This mom, with a full heart, knows one consequential fact:
You CAN go home again. And if it's safe, you should.
P.S. No matter how you celebrate, who you celebrate with, I wish you the gift of much to be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving.
Celebration Cupcakes
©www.BakingInATornado.com
Printable Recipe
Ingredients:
1 box chocolate cake mix
1 box chocolate instant pudding mix
1/2 cup canola oil
1 cup milk
4 eggs
2 jars (7 oz) marshmallow creme
1 TBSP milk
2 TBSP multicolored sprinkles
3 TBSP powdered French vanilla flavored creamer
2 TBSP decorating sequins (can substitute multicolored sprinkles)
Directions:
*Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 18 cupcake cups with paper liners.
*Beat the cake mix, pudding mix, oil, 1 cup milk, and eggs for 2 minutes.
*Scoop the batter into the cupcake liners and bake for 20 to 24 minutes, or until the center springs back to the touch. Cool completely.
*Making sure not to go all the way to the bottom. use an apple corer to make a hole in the center of the cupcakes. Keep the cupcake plugs that you remove.
*Lightly spray a spatula and the inside of a gallon size plastic bag with nonstick spray.
*Mix one of the jars of marshmallow creme with 1 TBSP milk and 2 TBSP multicolored sprinkles. Scoop into the plastic bag.
*Snip the corner of the bag and pipe the fluff into the cored-out centers of the cupcakes. Press the tops of the cupcake plugs on top.
*Mix the French vanilla flavored creamer into the remaining jar of marshmallow creme. Dollop onto the top of the cupcakes. Sprinkle with decorating sequins or more multicolored sprinkles.