Going Home Again . . .

Today’s post is by a guest contributor. Stacey Lundgren is a friend of mine. She called me out of the blue one day to inquire as to whether I’d be interested in publishing her book, True Bucketfilling Stories: Legacies of Love. I was not interested since I was no longer publishing books. But, she intrigued me as did her attitudes and her book idea. We had a couple lengthy discussions and it just seemed right that I provide her with consulting on her book publishing quest and we became friends. That was nearly two years ago. But, it seems like we’ve been friends for much longer.

Her contribution is an article she wrote for Troy Media Corporation, a Canadian based, on-line media group who publish Stacey’s articles and makes them available to other publications world wide. I publish it with Stacey’s permission. While it doesn’t exactly fit the normal theme of my “Living Free” blog, there is something very important in this story that moved me and I wanted to share it with you. So, here is Going Home Again by Stacey Lundgren.

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 “Going home again” and its variants, from the title of a famous book – You Can’t Go Home Again – by Thomas Wolfe, is a commonly used expression. It’s ironic that the book was published in 1940, after Wolfe’s death – after he did “go home”, so to speak. I’ve sometimes wondered what “going home” might mean to me.

I recently spent a week making presentations to schools in suburban Chicago, Illinois, my hometown until age 13. When I told one of the principals that I attended Sutherland Elementary School on Leavitt Ave., only 20 minutes away from where we stood, she said “Hey, that was my school as a kid!” This would have been a coincidence if I believed in them. However, my belief is there are no accidents; everything happens for a reason.

Several years before, my youngest daughter and I had visited the old neighborhood to look around and it looked great! We swung by Sutherland School, – an imposing, two-story brick building built in 1926 – and although it was closed for the summer, it, too, looked in good shape. Nothing had changed on the exterior although I imagined the interior had undergone some remodeling and no longer looked anything like it had 57 years ago.

Entering another world

With some free time on my hands during my most recent trip, I entered the address of our old family home into the GPS, then drove directly to Sutherland. The playground where we had recess every day was now a faculty parking lot. A chain link fence surrounded it. I parked along the street behind the school and sat there for a while, looking at the back of the school, my heart pounding. Why was I hesitating?

Walking across the parking lot to the back door, I kept turning around to glance back at my car: it felt like I was abandoning one world for another. A woman ahead of me held the door open for me, then quickly disappeared. I stood just inside, the door bumping my back as it closed.

When I look up, I wondered, what will I see? Low ceilings, florescent lights illuminating a bright, modern hallway? Will I recognize anything? I lifted my head, braced for the changes that would jolt my senses.

My heart flip-flopped, and time faltered. Right there, at the top of the eight steps in front of me, was the door to Mrs. Longfield’s classroom. She was my all-time favorite teacher; I spent first and second grades with her. “Room 102,” painted in familiar, black numbers, was on the class panel above the original door; the sight riveted me. I gripped the handrail and pulled myself up the steps. In the seconds I stood staring, the decades dissolved. Nothing had changed. Where were the re-clad walls and new lockers? Where were the newly-tiled floors? Instantly, I was sucked back into 1954.

 “May I help you?” asked the young woman in the school office. Yes, I thought. You can help me by explaining what is happening to me. Ha! No chance of that; she looked to be about 21 years old. Why did this place render me speechless?

I fumbled in my purse for a business card. Perhaps she wouldn’t summon security if she saw I was a business person. “Oh,” she said, taking the card. “Do you have an appointment?”

Stacey, I said to myself. You’re a professional woman. For gosh sakes, say something! I managed, “My name is . . .” and began to cry. So . . .there you have it. You can definitely go home again. But be prepared for the feelings, which I certainly wasn’t.

Memories

Instead of security, she called the assistant principal, Ms. Elwood, who smiled at me as I managed between the sniffling to explain my visit. She offered to accompany me on a brief tour. We first went to the assembly hall. The double wooden doors were the same. She pushed one of them open, and I stepped inside. There it was – the formal stage with the old, wood floor and green curtains, the balcony with the ancient, connected seats. A memory flashed! I turned to the unsuspecting Ms. Elwood. Incredulous, she heard me recite, “Come, Robins, you don’t need a plate. Your dinner’s all ready. Come quick! Don’t be late!” Center stage, I had held a cardboard sign with a picture of a robin, worm in its beak. I scanned the audience for my mother. There she was in the center of the main floor seats, smiling at me! Mom rotated her right hand over her left, letting me know that my sign was upside down. I turned it over quickly, and she grinned. She was proud of me. Mrs. Elwood, however, was confused. “What was that?” she asked. I told her, “Those were my lines from the Spring first grade play of 1954,” I replied. “Amazing”, she said.

 “Would you like to visit Room 102?” asked Ms. Elwood. “Let’s go!” I replied. Outside the assembly hall, I looked left and saw the girls’ bathroom. “Toilet recess”, I said aloud. “What?” she asked. “Toilet recess. We lined up twice a day in single file to go to the bathroom. Teachers would let three of us go in; when we came out, three others would go in. No talking was allowed. We could get a quick slurp from the drinking fountain, as long as we didn’t hold up the line.” Such a ritual! I thought. Going potty was serious business back then. And quiet.  

Standing outside of Room 102, my mind raced. I looked left at the first locker and was again propelled back in time. An unfamiliar woman had been sitting at a folding table in that very spot. Unsuspecting students lined up down the hallway to enter my beloved Room 102 for something unimaginable – like lambs to the slaughter. One student at a time entered the room. There were occasional screams. The rumor spread down the line to my horrified ears. A SHOT! Heroic (not to me at the time) Dr. Jonas Salk had invented the polio vaccine, and parents around the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. The horror of polio would soon be in the past. The horror of getting a surprise shot, however, was in our immediate futures. The line got agonizingly shorter. Move forward, hollering. Move forward, “MOMMY!”

Inside the room, the old, ink-welled desks had been replaced by slightly more modern ones. But look! There was the radiator! Every day an older student delivered our box of little milk bottles; he placed the box on the radiator. Later in the morning, we each got a bottle of warm milk; it went well with the Salerno butter cookie.

Academic hardship

The built-in wooden drawers with tarnished handles were still there. That’s where Mrs. Longfield kept the lined paper and fat pencils we used; it was that shorter paper with blue lines spaced very far apart. The paper had little chunks of wood in it; apparently we learned to print right over those chunks. This is my generation’s claim to academic hardship, poorly competing with our parents walking five miles to school, uphill both ways. The room was quiet, students at recess, teacher at her desk. Ms. Elwood told her I had been a student in this classroom over 50 years ago. She smiled, saying, “Last year I went back to my old elementary school in Ohio, but it was torn down and replaced.” I almost cried again.

A bit robotically, I shook the assistant principal’s hand and thanked her for her time. Reluctantly, I walked down those old stairs, out the recess door, and across the playground. With keys still in my purse, I sat in the car. I did not want to leave. But there were grown-up things to do . . . in a few minutes.

What was I feeling? I had expected the school to be remodeled on the inside. Perhaps that would have made more sense to me. If Sutherland were different all these years later, would that legitimize how different I am? Maybe that would help me better accept the tides of change.

But it was the same, and I was not. The chubby little girl with the blonde ponytail was all grown up; she was a mother and grandmother. The emotions were confusing. Instead of warm feelings of nostalgia while picturing things as they had once been at Sutherland, I collided with the reality that Sutherland was unchanged. Science fiction movies about brave people being projected into the future or flung back to the past in a time machine never appealed to me. But the return to Sutherland was the closest thing I can imagine to that – the adult me visiting the place where I had spent about 9,000 hours of my youth, seeing it exactly as it had looked all those years ago. Could this possibly mean I am the same, too? Is my existence on a parallel with Sutherland School? Perhaps. And as I sat there sorting out my feelings, it took me a while to stop crying. Perhaps growing older does not mean we’ve changed. The heart remains the same.

We can go home again. It could feel as if time has stood still, or it could feel like we were never there at all. I, for one, feel grateful to have accepted that risk.

Stacey A. Lundgren is a professional speaker, character education (anti-bullying) expert, co-owner of the Michigan-based company Bucketfillers For Life, Inc., and author of the highly-acclaimed anti-bullying/pro-kindness book, True Bucketfilling Stories: Legacies of Love .

Read more: You can go home again | Troy Media Corporation