They say that you can't go home again. You can, but maybe only in your mind.We're moving, from really the only house that #2 Son has ever known. This is the house that he will look back on - thirty years from now - as his childhood home.
Miranda Lambert is an artist we've seen here before - she's one of the gifted singer/songwriters that brings the best of times to the current Country music best of times/worst of times. This is her new single, and while it's the first one that she didn't write, it's a real cracker.
This song speaks to us here Chez Borepatch, in many different ways. The house is as old as I, and I'm only the third owner. I'm the third owner who has built onto the house. Our old cats - old when #2 Son was born - are buried by the Burning Bush in the back yard. I got lost in this old world and forgot who I am. I'm lucky that I had my family to help me find myself again.
You can't go home again. You leave home and you move on, and you do the best you can. Life goes on, and the past is a land that we can only visit in our dreams, or our memories. #2 Son is coping with the idea of moving, but some day he may come back to see this House that Built him.
The House That Built Me (Songwriters: Tom Douglan, Allen Shamblin):
I know they say you can’t go home again
I just had to come back one last time
Ma’am I know you don’t know me from Adam
But these handprints on the front steps are mine
Up those stairs in that little back bedroom
Is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar
I bet you didn’t know under that live oak
My favorite dog is buried in the yard
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing
Out here it’s like I’m someone else
I thought that maybe I could find myself
If I could just come in I swear I’ll leave
Won’t take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me
Mama cut out pictures of houses for years
From Better Homes and Gardens magazine
Plans were drawn and concrete poured
Nail by nail and board by board
Daddy gave life to mama’s dream
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing
Out here it’s like I’m someone else
I thought that maybe I could find myself
If I could just come in I swear I’ll leave
Won’t take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me
You leave home and you move on and you do the best you can
I got lost in this old world and forgot who I am
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing
Out here it’s like I’m someone else
I thought that maybe I could find myself
If I walk around I swear I’ll leave
Won’t take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me
This is the House That Built Me, in Ravenna, Ohio. #2 Son took this picture when we came back to see it. We didn't take nothin' but a memory.
Dad still lives in the house where they brought me home when they adopted me. It's the only house I really knew, though we had cabins we rented both on the coast and in the woods of the West for summers.
ReplyDeleteIt was once out in the open farmland, it's now surrounded by big box marts and traffic. Still it is home. It's not in a city or an area that any of we kids wish to or could, with work, live in, so when he is gone it will be sold.
THAT will be difficult.
Ravenna? Small world. Mine's in Barberton.
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