You can't go home again... and yet you must

One of my aunts e-mailed me over the weekend to let me know that my childhood home had been torn down and a McMansion had been built in its place. I hadn't seen our old brick two-story on Beverly Drive in years, but still, knowing it's gone is really upsetting. I think in some tiny back mental room, I thought maybe I'd live there again someday.

I loved that house, and the few good childhood memories I have were made there. In many ways, I think I've been looking for that house ever since we moved into the slightly tonier neighborhood that became a violent backdrop to the explosive end of my parent's marriage.

So, when I return to Chicago tomorrow after another year away, it will be to a lonelier landscape that no longer includes my childhood home or my father. A landscape that looks a little more bereft because yet another possibility has died.

It makes me feel old and more certain that even when you go home again, you don't.