Back in Lawrence (Or: You Can Go Home Again. Kinda.)
Even as we prepared to return to Lawrence, the place that felt the most like “home” during my adult years, I kept repeating the following to myself: You can’t go home again. You can’t go home again. You can’t go home again. Lunch with an old friend. I’d lived here eight years — most of them encompassing the last, most fun part of my extended bachelorhood — then been gone eight years. I had changed: A child, settled firmly into marriage, my body broken by surgery, my spirit humbled (and saddened) by age and the knowledge that life, my life anyway, is not the series of ever-greater achievements that I once expected it to be. The town had changed, too. There are new, taller buildings downtown, a sign that this small town is determined to join the ranks of cities. Some old favorite businesses are closed; some new restaurants have popped up. The newspaper where I spent my favorite professional years has been sold and reduced staff. My friends are older; in the intervening year