Going Home Again - Oct 2 2026

 

Going Home Again

Oct 2 2026

It’s always smaller than you remember

if it’s even still there.

The postage stamp backyard

your closet-sized room.

You can go home again

but not really. 

And while the big maple is even bigger

you parents shrunk;

the father

who was all-powerful

is now a small old man,

the mother bear

who so fiercely protected her young

has turned into a teddy

with some stuffing leaking out.

But while things diminish

moments loom large.

The crumpled fender,

best friend,

bad job.

The fishing trips

with just the two of you.

First grade, first kiss, first drunk,

first sex

that wasn’t embarrassing. 

The pets

whose deaths can still bring tears,

when the cruel truth

there’s no forever

landed like a betrayal.

Memory works that way.

It’s less a camera, recording in real time

than a poem

you write from the heart.

Then rewrite countless times

because it sounds wrong

goes on too long

or doesn’t matter anymore.

Because you want to make it rhyme

or find a better word.

Or because of something you said,

cutting a difficult line

you felt you had to write

but know could never share.

As more was learned about how memory works, the more it was understood that it isn’t fixed. That every time a memory is called upon — depending on things like mood, state of mind, circumstance,  expectation, and new information — it gets written. And, of course, even a virgin memory — the original version, uncontaminated by recall — is not what happened, it’s what we perceived. Because there’s a big difference between objective reality and what our senses take in, and then what our brain determines should be given salience. Just ask 2 people who witnessed the same event to recall what they saw. Neither version is likely the whole truth! Defence lawyers know this: eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable and easily influenced, perhaps by overhearing someone else’s recounting, or something as simple as a leading question. 

Things are forgettable. But experiences and relationships leave a strong impression. Which is what they say about life. That it won’t be the fancy car or big house you remember on your deathbed, it will be the relationships:  the people and events that won’t fade, and where consolation and meaning might be found. 

I certainly don’t share much. I don’t write confessional poetry. I make stuff up and take poetic license. 

It’s not that I don’t want my reader to see herself in it when she can. But it’s a shared sensibility or an image that strikes a chord, not a spotlight on my life, with all its minor traumas and personal flaws.

In the penultimate stanza, I couldn’t resist goes on too long, even if it doesn’t strictly apply to memory. Because it applies so nicely to the poetry metaphor. Or at least my poems, which usually do. Even though I know better, but still refuse to rewrite. (Unable to cut even a single precious word!)