Going Home

This week I'll be traveling, and for the first time in a very long time (three years to be exact), I'll be "heading home."

I'm excited for the trip and the opportunity to spend some quality time with my mom, and in the sunshine. She says it's been cool there but let's be honest, her cool is Lincoln's spring, heading towards summer. I was going to bring my swimsuit, but instead she said I should bring a sweater. I'll bring both, just in case...

This trip will take me back to the place I grew up, where I went to school, had my children and developed my love of horses - and sheep. It was a very small town when I lived there. When I moved there at the young age of five, there were only a thousand or so people living there. When I left in 1995, that little town had become an incorporated city and boasted more than 70 thousand people. Today, some 25 years later, there are more than 113 thousand people residing in my "hometown."

What was the historic downtown is now an antique-lover's paradise, but I see the buildings for what they were when I lived there. The old Longbranch Saloon, where there were often bar fights and gun fights between literal cowboys and Indians, and at any time during the day you would find horses tethered to the hitching post. The Bank Mexican Restaurant, which back in the days before even I moved there, was an actual bank. Kid's World, the preschool who also ran the town's summer camp program still stands there, but with different owners than when I attended.

There's something about going home that has me feeling nostalgic. I'll likely drive by the houses where I grew up, friends' houses I spent many hours at playing, the places I worked (if they still exist) and other places that bring back good memories of my youth.

Growing up there was a lot like what Lincoln is now, or has been. We lived on the same street as our Italian pizza shop owner, the only tow-truck /junkyard owner in town, the shoe store owner, and one of the local doctors. We knew the people who owned the local barber shop, candy store, donut shop, ice-cream parlor, the grocery store, pharmacy, butcher shop, hardware store, gift shops and local wineries - and I went to school with their kids.

Many of us "kids" moved away as we got older. There are currently at least four of us (from my graduating class) who live somewhere in Montana, a few in Idaho, Wyoming and South Dakota. Several of my friends stayed and have lived in that town their whole life. I've lost touch with many of those people I once called friends, and I think that's just what happens over time. There are a few who I will see while I'm visiting that I've known since kindergarten.

Maybe my growing up in that small town is what made and makes Lincoln feel so much like home to me. I like the small. I like the community. I love the wilderness, the quiet and the comfort small towns bring me. My daughter (the Philly city kid) asks if I'll ever leave Lincoln and always seems surprised when I say I don't think so. I guess that makes me lucky to not want to leave a place that feels so much like home.

So this week, while I take a trip to my hometown and down memory lane where I spent an amazing childhood, I'll actually get to "go home" twice. Once there and another back here. It's a pretty amazing thing to be able to call two places home, and I feel incredibly blessed to do it.

My hope is that wherever you call home, you have and share your own memories there - and if you have two like me, you recognize just how lucky and blessed you are.