Two weeks ago I returned to my old hometown in Minnesota for the first time in 18 years. And I still can’t shake the obvious: change is constant. Whether we like it or are prepared for it or not.

I could only identify two stores along the three-block downtown that were there in my childhood. Most of the businesses appeared to be on life support. Further south from downtown a once modest commercial stretch reminded me of an abandoned cowboy town. Only the tumbleweed was missing. My high school had been leveled and rebuilt on the north edge of town. My parent’s last and once-proud home, across from the school, stood lifeless. And the downtown store my dad started in 1948 and sold in 1980 is teetering on the verge of going out of business. Perhaps the hardest change of all to swallow.

Hometown lake in Minnesota

Little about my hometown seemed as I remembered it, except the pretty lake at its center. It hadn’t died as a community. It only felt that way. So much that anchored my memories of growing up there has now disappeared, if not physically, then emotionally. I told my wife the last morning we were there, I’m not sure I will ever have the need or desire to return. (more…)