You Can't Go Home Again by "psychopath-convention"
You can't go home again. Because even if the place remains the same, the person you are is forever altered. Ponyboy knows this, but he comes home one last time anyway.
Disclaimer: I do not own The Outsiders or its characters; the lovely S.E. Hinton does. I also do not own the quote, "You can't go home again".
- I'll be honest, I really don't quite know what this is. It's partly a response to the quote "you can't go home again" and partly just me being nostalgic about the house I grew up in. Nevertheless, I really hope you enjoy reading it!
As I walked up to the abandoned house on Hickory Street with the green shutters and the caving roof, I saw a whole different picture.
I saw three little boys playing in the yard, a mother on the porch trying to call them in for dinner, a father coming home and being bombarded with hugs.
Where others saw a place that needed to be torn down, a place that could be a safe haven for runaway criminals or homeless people, a hazard to the neighborhood, I saw a home.
It wasn't much to begin with, but this was definitely much worse that I remembered. It wasn't like we had intentionally let it go downhill in our time living here, but Darry and Soda worked full time, and I could barely wash a load of clothes without turning something a different color. We were teenage boys, not homemakers.
I opened the rusted gate, disregarding the "Caution: do not enter" sign, and stepped into the yard to look around.
Where a stranger might see that dead oak tree that got struck by lightning in the summer of seventy-one as an eyesore, I see the tree that Darry fell out of when he was eight and broke his arm; the tree that Dad's hunting beagle is buried under. God, we loved that dog.
The social workers wanted it cut down. They always thought it'd fall on the house and kill us. An immature and spiteful part of me is pleased to see it's still there.
Those old, rotting steps look like they'd cave in if you ran up them too quickly. When I look at them, all I see is the steps that my parents sat on every evening until they died, talking about their day and watching the sun set ... the steps I was sitting on when I had my first kiss.
I always used to hate the way the social workers would look disdainfully at our overgrown lawn. It was never cut regularly and was always cluttered with all sorts of random junk. Now, it was nearly up to my knees, with trash littered everywhere. However, I was remembering being young and running around with Darry, Soda, and Dad playing football. Back then, there were even flowers planted near the porch. Now the porch was sagging to the point of near collapse, with that same ratty sofa that Steve found on some Soc's curb still on it. I've lain awake many summer nights on that front porch counting the stars.
I looked at the empty driveway where Darry always parked his old red Ford pickup with the chipped paint and dented passenger door. That's the truck Darry, Soda, and I all learned how to drive in; the truck we all fought over shotgun in to go fishing or hunting with my Dad on Sundays after church. He sold it in 1976.
I walk inside and look at the living room. Our old couch is still there; Darry didn't find it worth taking when he moved out. I want to go and sit on it, but I'm afraid I'd disrupt a family of mice. For a minute, I close my eyes and imagine that Steve and Soda are on that couch fighting over who gets to sit in the spot that doesn't have the cushion with the loose spring. I picture myself and Johnny on the floor playing cards, Two-Bit sitting on the floor in front of where the television used to be, eyes glued to the screen, and Dallas leaned against the wall trying to light a cigarette without Darry's noticing. Darry is sitting in Dad's old armchair reading the paper. The smirk on his face shows that he knows what Dallas is doing, but will let him get away with it "just this once". There are pictures on the mantle and it smells like Darry's cooking.
This is the last happy memory I have of the gang. The last time we were all together with none of us in jail, or run away. Or dead.
God, I just want to go back. I'd do anything to be that red-headed kid with his best friends, before I found out that the monsters weren't under the bed; they were inside of me.
I hadn't realized how much I'd changed until I came back here. The world had made me forget who I really was. I wasn't golden anymore. I left home and left myself behind with all these memories; I was someone else now. But I was back at last, and I hoped it wasn't too late.
I go and touch a hole in the wall level with the armrest of the couch. I imagine thirteen year-old Soda running into the living room where mom was sitting to show her his report card: he passed math and got a B in history. For him, that was a miracle. He ran into the room and flung himself onto the couch. It promptly slammed into the wall, leaving a respectable crack in the plaster.
I walk through the living room to the kitchen and stand in the spot where our table used to be. I think of how family dinners were, all of us going around and sharing something about our day. Dad and Soda's loud laughter mixed with Darry's low chuckle. Mom and I sitting there smiling, always the quieter ones. I think of how Mama's cooking used to smell on Sundays after church.
Now for the hard part. I walk to the little back bedroom with the broken doorknob: the room I shared with Soda. The door is closed, and for a minute I don't want to open it, don't want to remember what's there. But I do anyway, and it's just as awful as I thought it would be. Tears sting my eyes as I walk into the empty room with the peeling beige paint. I go and sit on the floor where our bed used to be and let myself cry until I run out of tears. I'm not thinking of the house now, I'm thinking of Soda and all the things he never got to do.
Soda died in Vietnam when I was seventeen and a senior in high school. I found out when I got called to the office one day in October. I remember it was exactly a week before his twentieth birthday. I cried right there in the office. People stopped to stare at me but I didn't give a shit.
Soda never got to move out of this house. He never worked anywhere other than the DX, and he never moved on from his first love. He never had kids, and he'd never grow old. That's what hurt more than anything else. What Soda was missing as I sat here and felt guilty for breathing.
After a while, though, I start thinking of the happy memories.
Our old dresser is still there. It's an old wooden bureau with drawers that stick out about four inches because Soda busted it when he tried to cram it with too many unfolded shirts. I think about how when I was four and Soda was six, we would climb on top of it and fling ourselves off onto the bed, pretending we were Superman.
Growing up, there may have been a million things I wanted and didn't have, and a few things I needed and didn't have, but we survived and did the best we could. I didn't grow up slow but, in our neighborhood, no one did. The important thing is that I grew up feeling wanted. I don't care how much money you have, not all kids get that. That's why I hate that Social workers judged us, they just saw what was on the outside; they didn't feel the memories. Yeah, our house was run down. But a lot of living is what made it that way.
After Johnny died, and they were thinking about relocating me to a "safer" environment, I just wanted to tell them the truth: No matter where they took me, it wouldn't be home. Whether I lived in a mansion on the other side of town, or somewhere miles away from Tulsa, that run-down three bedroom house on Hickory Street with leaky roof would always be my home.
Before I got there, I thought I missed this house more than anything. But I'm realizing that isn't true. What I'm missing is the person I was in this house. The boy with his parents alive. The boy whose brother didn't die in Vietnam while he was still just a teenager. The boy didn't lose two of his best friends at age fourteen.
This house is just a building. It's building of fond memories, but still just a structure. It was what it housed that gave it life.
And after all this time, I could still see the life in it.
This house is where I was raised, but it isn't where I grew up. I grew up sporadically, in little places here and there.
I grew up the summer my grandfather died of cancer, seeing my dad cry at his funeral. I grew up the night two policemen knocked on our door late one night to tell us we were orphans. I accidentally walked in on Darry in the bathroom later that night and he was just running the water in the shower to drown out his sobs. I grew up when I had to start doing things for myself because Darry and Soda were working all the time.
I sure put on a few years in Windrixville and in its aftermath.
By the time I found out Soda wasn't coming home from Vietnam, I was already an old man.
It seems like everywhere I grew up is related to a cemetery.
The End.