Thomas Wolfe Was Wrong

My Mom unintentionally started my grudge with Thomas Wolfe. I never was happy about moving from the Seattle Area. I made some good friends in Wyoming and there are many beautiful places in Wyoming. Rock Springs is not one of them. I once told my Mom that I intended to buy back the house on Finn Hill where I grew up. It was only a pipe-dream and she recognized it as nostalgia for our old home and some resentment in me for the move to Mos Eisely Spaceport, er, Rock Springs.

And I had my troubles at my first high school that I have chronicled here. Yes, I was kind of a dropout. There were the teenage turmoils and Quadrophenic angst going on as well. Maybe I do get Thomas Wolfe's point that if you write fiction based on your family and friends and are honest enough to the point of recognizable characters in your critiques, yeah, you can't go back home.

That's why my personal essays here attempt to be honest and genuine. Truth can be a sword with one edge used in dishonest or unnecessarily hurtful ways. I tell it like I feel it, which for me is as honest as I can get no matter how wrong I may be.

OK, this is going too deeply philosophical. What I intended to share is how surprised I've been by renewed connections even if mostly through social media. This link is exhibit A from Facebook (names and links modified):

Grant

March 20 at 10:30pm

I went to three high schools. Only one has invited me to the 40th. I'm impressed and flattered by my original set of school friends.

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  Seen by 56

  TR, DS, NC and 10 others like this.
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  DW You, Norv, Dave; you are definitely part of the Gang no matter where you graduated!

  22 hrs · Unlike · 2
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  MW Same here

  9 hrs · Unlike · 1
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  DB We got your Back Grant ....

  9 hrs · Unlike · 1
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  DB
  

  
  

  

Many of us did go to school together from kindergarten on to high school. I was with many of the same group until I was in the 10th grade. Some of these were friends from the neighborhood, even just up the street from my old house that I do still inhabit at times in my pleasant dreams.

But it's not just sense of place. It is the sensation of people. And across the decades, I am still the same person as the boy I was even though changed in so many ways - mostly for the better (except the looks, and the hair - gone).

Outside of the openness of Facebook, I have had some friends from long ago and now again currently share deep and painful things with me in my present state as a moderately old man. I can't offer much. And Wolfe was mostly right, you can't go home again.

But here's what we can do. We can practice Faith, Hope, and Charity and share those with friends from long ago and the present. And the greatest of these is Charity.

I thank my friends for the pure love of Charity.