Beyond the Kinkadian Glow
That moment you realize your neighborhood is no longer your neighborhood
“Don’t you know that you can’t go home again?”
-Ella Winter, in conversation with Thomas Wolfe
As of this writing, my parents’ house remains frozen in October 2020, via “street view” in Google Maps.
Just four months later, they would become retirement home residents due to the realities of their ages and respective medical issues. At the same time, a young family with a two-year-old boy would move in, feeling the very same excitement and anticipation for a new home that my parents (and my then-one-and-a-half year-old older sister) had experienced in 1968.
The “street view” image depicts a bleak, overcast fall day, with my dad’s SUV sitting in the carport, and the three-person patio swing sitting next to the front steps, with cushions already packed away for the winter. In her later years, it was from her spot on the swing that my late mother would hold court with neighbors, friends, and family over afternoon glasses of Pinot Grigio. At these times, passersby (familiar or otherwise) would be greeted with an impromptu wave and “hello”. (My mother may have been a certified…
