They say you cannot go home again, but I am lucky, I get to go home. I go to my parent's house, which is the house I lived in from about 1960 till 1973, when dad was transferred to Southern California with North American Rockwell. It shattered my 17 year old world at the time. I remember walking room to room saying goodbye to the house and thinking I would never get to return to the place I loved best in the entire world. My college plans to Berry College in Rome, Georgia were cancelled. My then engagement to a fellow in Florida was basically going to end due to the move...and that was my late 1973.
It would be 15 years until I got to return to Cocoa Beach, FL, and for 15 years I had a recurring dream of walking from the old bus stop in Convair Cove, where the sign reads, "We have plenty of children, but none to spare, please drive carefully," down my street Dempsey Dr, pass the old oak that used to be in the front of the old Starkey house on the left, and down to my house. I would go through the gate on the side of the house and walk into my back yard. I could feel the warm sun on my skin and smell the sweet salt ocean breeze. Then I would wake up. I would sometimes pinch myself to be sure it was not a dream and feel it and still I would wake up. Since returning to Cocoa Beach and walking that walk the dream no longer haunts me.
I longed so much to be back home but home had become the west coast from 73 until 97, from Huntington Beach to Beaverton, OR, to Silicon Valley, and then in 97 off to Boston, MA and later to Austin, TX. I have never returned to live in FL. I likely never will because most of my children and five of my eight grand children are in the Austin, TX area. But for now, as my parents are in their so-called golden years, we visit and I get to enjoy the scruffy beach town I grew up in during the hey day of the early space program.
I am home. I still know some folks that I went to school with who live in or near town. We try to have a breakfast each year and catch up. A few of the elderly neighbors are still here and alive in their 90s. God bless them.
I still am baffled that we are all seniors now. I have watched as some have buried their parents or spouses. I am baffled that some have great grand kids or grands in college. How did that happen?
We were the generation that protested the Vietnam War, started Earth day, we wore flowers in our hair, and some were lucky enough to go to Woodstock. We questioned authority. As I look around, these young faces that are still in my mind, now have grey hair and have earned the wrinkles on their faces. The kids that invented the surfing industry on the east coast grew up here. We watched the space program grow from its infancy to its fruition and die and be reborn and die again...only to be reborn again today. Those were exciting, flag waving days when the astronauts would return for a parade down Orlando and Atlantic Avenues. Every day we recited the Pledge of Allegiance at Freedom 7 Elementary School.
We grew up with crab grass and sand spurs, and sand in our shoes--if we wore shoes. The mosquitoes would eat us alive. I never knew it was paradise until my paradise was lost. The truth is, even if I wanted to move back I would be hard pressed to afford it. Prices, like in most towns have gone up. Taxes are not cheap so maybe in that regard, I cannot go home again. But, for now, I am here, enjoying the lazy days, the salty humid air, being with my parents and my uncle for another blessed Christmas. I am enjoying sitting on the dock to read or just soak up the sun.
I watch my dog chase the lizards and jump at the sound of a heron flying down the canal or jump after a fish jumps.
I will take my walk to the park I used to play in when I was a child and we will go get a pina colada at Coconuts. I will visit with the old friends I love and then we will return home to Texas...and for another year I will have gone back home. Again.