Recently, I had the good fortune of going back to the state where I grew up in New England, having been recently “fully vaccinated.” It was the first time that I had been on a plane in well over a year, and it felt great to “freely move about the cabin” again. I needed to feel and smell that New England spring air on my face, visit with beloved family and friends, and eat the wonderful foods that I grew up with. Mostly, though, I longed to visit two friends who had become seriously ill during the pandemic. One has cancer, and one is going back on the lung re-transplant list shortly. I was only able to travel the journey with them through telephone calls and emails this year due to the pandemic but longed to hug them and make a new memory with them as well.

I grew up in the land where lilacs bloom in spring and where I wove crowns of forsythia in my hair while playing outside for hours as a young child.

It is the land where you can travel among fields of daffodils in the spring that take your breath away and remind me of my mother watching and waiting through the window with me for the very first daffodil to pop up through the spring ground to unfold its leaves and flowers with all its glory and infinite possibilities. It is the land where tulips grow in time for Easter, too, and crocuses pop up through patches of snow. It is the land where pansies laugh at the spring snow while stretching their faces toward the warmth of the sun. It is the land where the rocky shore meets the cool ocean water. It is the land where the colonists came for religious freedom.

It has been said that you can’t go home again, that time changes things so much that all is far too different since you’ve left to still be home. However, my home state is the place where my parents are buried, where I met my husband, and where I shared my first kiss. It is the place where I was married and where my daughter was born. It is the place that smells like all the bread we broke with our beloved relatives on the holidays, as there is a bakery on many a corner. It is the place of party pizza and spinach pies. It is the place of wieners and saugys. It is the place where I learned to walk and went to school. It is where I picked mulberries with my cousin and climbed trees on the way home from school. It is where I skinned my knees (a lot). It is where I learned to ride a bike and get back up when I fell. It is the place where most of my relatives live still. It is the place where I learned to be me. It is the place of old friendships and good times. It is the place where leaves crunched beneath my feet on a cool October afternoon, and where I jumped into the pile of leaves that my father raked in the yard. It is the place where the cycle of life is so clearly evident; the summer brings the autumn, and the autumn brings the winter’s dormancy. It is where the coldest winter day gives rise to the promise of new life again in the spring season. Time marches on, yet somehow it stands still.

As my plane was landing at the airport, it struck me so very clearly. They say you can’t go home again, but I disagree. The places may be different, and the businesses have different names, but I can ALWAYS go home again, for “home” lives in my soul. I can ALWAYS go home again, if only in my heart. “HOME” is where the heart is, after all.

Life is good; carpe diem, friends…