April 5, 2026

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

Once you leave, you cannot go home again. Whatever routine, stirring emotions, people you interact with, even sounds, fragrances, the entire mojo are left behind, and should you think you “return,” you never do. It is like kissing a once longtime partner; it will bring you back, perhaps ring the bell, but it will be different.

It seems nature’s way that the chemistry is altered, for better or not. Most of us have to leave “home,” actually or metaphorically, to grow, to do the things we must.

The world for all would be static if people did not move on; it is how inventions happen, how great thought is revealed, how we are educated, how we partner and have families.

There is a force that pushes us, even if we resist. You may not think of moving on, but it probably will not be your decision.

And this can happen even if you stay “home” in the sense that you never leave Bedford Falls or Mandrake Falls, or the house of your birth or the routine of visiting neighbors and friends just up the street. Nothing, even the slow waltz of small and tight and charming and warm community does not go beyond the two minutes of record play at 78 rpm.

Yet in the greater quiet that is later life, after you have done what you must, in the armchair all alone, in the 3 a.m. waking, what was the “home” you left revisits in vividness. And you feel it all. That is the gift packed in your suitcase just as a mother would put a sandwich in the pocket of her departing grown child’s jacket.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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