Dad Could Not Go Home Again – A Remembrance

My dad grew up in New York, in what I believe was the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn.

When Dad was nearly eighty years old, we were visiting New York City together, and he asked me to rent a car and drive him to see the home he had grown up in.

When we arrived we discovered what appeared to be a large beer brewing facility.  There was no trace of any house in what had clearly become a commercial neighborhood.

“Take me back to the hotel,” he said.  “I never want to see this place again.”

My dad and I never spoke about this day, which means I will never know for sure how he felt.  But I imagine that if I visited my own childhood home near Glendale, California, and found a shopping center looming over what used to be my bedroom, I would be distressed, maybe devastated.  But I know I would hide my dismay, especially from myself.

We each need a place where we feel we belong.  A place that remains the same, steadfast, even as we change.  We need a touchstone where we feel at home in this strange and scary world.

My own touchstone is my real estate company, which I established fifty-four years ago and have nurtured ever since.  I can only imagine my distress if, somehow, I was able to visit our small office building on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, California, ten, twenty, or a hundred years from now, only to find the building gone and a vacant lot the only reminder that it, or I, ever existed.

As I write this, I am sitting in the baggage claim area of SeaTac airport.  I used to own a home, as well as several investment properties in Seattle.  Now I own nothing here.  As other travelers pick up their luggage, a comforting bit of home to accompany their journey from wherever, I have the sense that I no longer belong here.

Dad, I wish you well.  You are no longer in this world, but perhaps you have, indeed, found home again.

Love,

Alan