~Going Home~

As part of attending Shanbrad's wedding, we stopped off in my 'home' town.  I moved to Plymouth when I was 13, spent the first three years hating it, and spent the last two years devising my plans to leave.  While I made friends there, I knew it wasn't where I was going to come back to.  I wasn't planning on being a 'townie'.  I also didn't think my parents would still be living there eight years after I left. 

And while I didn't plan to come back, as soon as I left for college, Plymouth became my reference of 'home'.  When people asked where home was, where I went for holidays, or spent my short summer breaks, it was always Plymouth.  As my college experience was not the norm, my summers were not spent reacquainting myself with my home town, but rather I would pop in for a short three week visit.  Same thing with the holidays. 

 When I moved to South Carolina, I raced home to Plymouth whenever I could.  Or rather to my family, who was still in Plymouth.  It was at that point that I started to realize I was loosing my ties to the town.  Yes I still had a few friends that I saw on the occasions thats I was in town, but I was beginning to see pieces of the town that I grew up in slowly changing. Even the high school that I had attended and formed most of my Plymouth memories at was scheduled to disappear.  

As we were driving up on Wednesday, and back down today, we passed through New London, Connecticut, where I spent four years after I left Plymouth.  While I would never refer to New London as home, driving through there it felt like it was just yesterday--and not four years ago--that I was driving around that little town with my best friends going to Dunkin Donuts or Target and Coldstone.  Those memories are still so fresh.  We are going back there next year for my five year reunion, and I have a feeling that it will feel like it has been no time at all since I graduated, despite how much our lives have all changed.

On this short trip, the small amount of time we spent in Plymouth made me realize that as a town it isn't home anymore.  It is simply where my family lives.  On the surface it seems like the same little town that I remember, but if you dig a little deeper not much is the same.  Families have moved on, new stores have been built up, and the town is growing.  I had to run into Walmart on Thursday, and as I walked the aisles I realized I recognized no one.  Maybe they are some of the same people I once knew, but at this moment I was just a stranger in a town that I once lived in.  But I have to remember that while Plymouth has changed a lot in my mind, I have changed too.  I'm not the same girl who drove around in a periwinkle Kia eating boxes of nerds and singing at the top of my lungs with my friends.  Instead I strolled into Walmart in my minivan six months pregnant enjoying the solitude of a quick trip to the store by myself.  

It has been eight years since I really could call Plymouth home.  And I don't think I will call it home again.  For now, and probably until my children are grown and gone, the DC metro area, whether it be in Virginia or Maryland, will be home.  My family will still be in Plymouth, but now it will probably be called going to Grandma and Grandpa's house rather than going home. Plymouth will always be a part of who I am, but  I guess I've truly grown up now and finally left 'home'.