Maybe I Can’t Go Home Again

“Home is where when you go there, someone has to take you in.”

Is that true?

Someone also once said about life, “the happiest times are when your children are young.”

I had young children for a long time–30 years–so mine has been a happy life.

I like to revisit happy places that were once home and one of those spots is  Monterey, California.

When my husband finished a three-and-a-half-year tour on the oldest submarine in the Atlantic Ocean, we moved west to Naval Postgraduate School where he earned a master’s degree.

Everyone agrees PG School is one of the best billets in the Navy.

Thank you, American taxpayers.

Everyone was finally around!

Military members went home at night and attended school during the day.

That meant we ate dinner as a family, we could plan vacations, and even plan on dads in attendance for the birth of their children.

We joked about ‘the requisite La Mesa baby.” Many families delivered a baby while living in La Mesa housing.

Including us.

Living in simple units on a flat hill–a mesa–above Monterey’s fog belt, we savored family life.

Teachers from the community vied to teach at La Mesa School. The children were respectful, had a parent in graduate school and the non-military parents volunteered to help in the classroom.

I’d never lived in such an organized community before.

All the kids played soccer because dads were home to coach.

La Mesa boasted the largest cub scout troop in California. It took all day to run the Pinewood Derby on six tracks–with one reserved for parents to keep actual competition limited to the boys.

(The flyer parents would take their son’s wooden cars into the wind tunnel to check for aerodynamics. That was simply unfair . . . )

Returning “home” years later.

But last week as I drove up the hill–the one my husband faithfully rode his bike up every day coming home–I saw LaMesa has changed.

Instead of the “Capehart” houses the Navy built everywhere, large modern homes often two stories high, dotted the lots.

I recognized the street names–I’d walked those blocks religiously during our years there–but the neighborhood did not look the same.

I got so disoriented, I stopped my car to remember.

When a La Mesa mom approached–pushing the requisite baby in a stroller and walking her dog–I got out and asked if I could stroll with her.

“This used to be home,” I explained. “And I’d like to know how La Mesa has changed. I can show you my ID card.”

She explained about the new homes, the busy child care center, and the happiness of having dad around. She was delivering a surprise Halloween treat to a neighbor, “see, we still have traditions here.”

Military life now includes e-mail, Skype, and cell phones with international coverage. Those are positives and I’m thankful.

But it still has long deployments, combat situations, and lonely family members left behind. Children still want to touch their parents.

But a house is not a home

When we came to my old address, I felt a stab at the empty lot.

The current Navy wife explained the military is taking pains to make housing more like what families could get on “the outside,” now.

That means tearing down the old and building the new.

They didn’t start with our house, but it’s gone.

The air is the same, as are the pines ringing the housing area. Streets bear familiar names and the baseball diamond hasn’t changed at all.

The mini-mart has a neon light but the trees have been trimmed. You can still hear the barking sea lions from down at the Monterey wharf.

The modern wife ruffled her toddler’s hair as we stopped in front of her very nice duplex. “It’s a great place to live and we’re happy.”

Even if I couldn’t go home again, I was glad to hear it.