You Can Go Home Again!

Several of the 12 men who’d gathered for the “last supper” in my former California hometown walked me to my car. I was leaving for Vermont the following morning.

I smiled as I headed down the driveway of John’s home. The laughter and “war stories” we’d shared during the previous two hours brought joy to my soul.

“Why Vermont?” they’d asked, curious about my decision to leave the “Golden State.”

“Why not?” I said.

The men’s church group in which I’d been an 18-year member was saying goodbye to me. “The Green Mountain State reminds me of Norway,” I added, “my childhood home for two and a half of the best years of my life.”

The pleasure I felt was prompted in part by the statue I held in my right hand. The muscular runner, around whose legs I’d wrapped my hand, had a grand piano strapped to his back. The inscription on the plaque beneath the runner, who was in full stride, read: “Roger: Perseverance! Love, Tom.”  I received thoughtful farewell gifts from each of the other ten men in our group, all of which I’d enjoyed, and when possible as in the case of books, revisited with fond memories, but Tom’s captured this reluctant disciple in stride.

That event took place ten years ago.

Last month, I returned to Los Angeles to see clients with whom I’ve maintained clinical ties, and to spend time with people whose friendships I cherish. On several previous trips to the West Coast—something I’ve done a dozen or so times over the last ten years—I attended the Friday morning meeting of the men’s group. I contact a member of the group in advance of my trip asking permission to join them. The response is the same every time: “You needn’t ask, of course you may, you’re one of us and always welcome!”

And though I’m grateful for the open invitation the feeling of being a men’s-group-retiree or an emeritus member creates in me a sense of being an interloper. It is the same feeling I had as a child in my home of origin where I belonged, but felt like an outsider in my parent’s presence. The son they perceived was the son they wanted me to be, not the one I was.

New members have joined the group, men with whom I have little or no history, but the core of the group remains the same. It had been ten months since my last visit to the group so brief introductions to “new” faces was in order, and then I was asked about my ongoing life in Vermont. This segued into a broader discussion of work and life issues in which each of the nine of us present participated.

One of the men who’d joined after I moved out of state asked if he could speak. He proceeded to compliment me on something I’d said, but then addressed an e-mail response he and others in the group had received from me, one which troubled him and made him angry (or so I thought) regarding a fellow member’s recent physical struggles.

“What the f**k was that about?” he asked.

Before I could respond he quoted or paraphrased words I’d written a month or so earlier. I must have looked puzzled because he then explained that when he’d checked with the member whose travails I’d referenced, that man said: “That’s Roger being Roger.”

“You have to know him,” said another, “it’s his tongue-in-cheek way.”

My (sometimes) sardonic manner had escaped him, and as I understood his WTF question he couldn’t believe I’d write something like that about a fellow member of the group.

After several minutes of “Roger being Roger” explanations, and an apology for the misunderstanding from me, we moved on to other topics. I thought about that exchange, and still do. I experienced a level of acceptance that made me feel embraced, even from the individual who took exception to my words. “Roger being Roger” was okay. That would not have been the case in the earliest, formative experiences of my life, during which there was no wiggle room for differences and outside-the-box expressions, including loving jibes and affectionate sarcasm.

The phrase “you can’t go home again” is part of our vernacular, a figure of speech whose origin can be traced to Thomas Wolfe’s novel, You Can’t Go Home Again. It has been years since I read the book, but the main character’s rejection by his hometown neighbors following unfavorable descriptions of them in a novel he’d written came to mind as I drove away from that Friday morning meeting.

I don’t recall whether George Webber, Wolfe’s protagonist, ever returned to his hometown, but I did to a home of sorts, and I carry that with me.

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