See listing of Recent and Most Popular articles on the Home Page

Senior Moments

Category: General / Topics: Change Friends & Neighbnors Memories

Home Sweet Home

by Dan Seagren

Posted: August 6, 2017

A flood of memories from a trip to my boyhood home…

The theme may have originated in a song written by American actor and dramatist John Howard Payne's 1823 in his opera Clair or The Maid of Milan: Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. Since then it has been a theme on TV, worldwide films, opera and became a reality for me when I returned home after 70 years.

Born in Chicago in 1927, then living in Grand Rapids, Michigan from 1931-45 which I consider home, sweet home. Now, while realizing how many I knew then are gone, it finally dawned on me that those I knew from my neighborhood, school, church, work and play who were then 50 years old would have been 120 years old now, even those in their twenties would be ninety. No wonder things changed, from neighborhoods, streets, emergent freeways, expanded borders. Even where we live now in a retirement facility was farmland back then.

Yet some things never change. While driving by our home of fourteen years, three women and a baby stood on the porch chatting. I edged toward them and the owner invited me in so I could see my home, sweet home. The floor plan was the same and memories flooded my soul. I also drove by my Grade School which had been replaced by a new, modern building but my high school remained intact but no longer a school. Likewise our old church building nearby.

The Grand River which ran through the city has changed except there is now a movement to restore it to what it was 70 years ago by removing the dams so the rapids could function again. Nostalgia is a restoration of longing, yearning and hungering tempered by change, both good and not so good. The street climbing steeply up to our home is now shut off except to pedestrians. I remember sliding down the hillside one winter and smashing into a tree. A neighboring young man rescued me and pulled me up that steep hill on my sled to my home sweet home home.

Our memory banks at times do store some but not all memories. Writing memoirs is not too fashionable for many, which is a pity. I remember how I urged by father to pen some of his experiences, which he did begin but never finished. I used many years of his diaries only to discover that they were only insignificant brief sentences not suitable for a memoir. I took what he had penned and added what my memory bank remembered. Have you checked your memory bank recently?



Search all articles by Dan Seagren

Dan Seagren is an active retiree whose writings reflect his life as a Pastor, author of several books, and service as a Chaplain in a Covenant Retirement Community.

E-mail the author (su.nergaesnad@brabnad*) Author's website (personal or primary**)

* For web-based email, you may need to copy and paste the address yourself.

** opens in a new tab or window. Close it to return here.


Posted: August 6, 2017   Accessed 748 times

Go to the list of most recent Senior Moments Articles
Search Senior Moments (You can expand the search to the entire site)
Go to the list of Most Recent and Most Popular Articles across the site (Home Page)