Big D's Fine But It Ain't Home. Detroit's Home But It Ain't Mine No More

I'm feeling very nostalgic for my hometown of Detroit this week. Perhaps because of the recent drop in outdoor temperatures this past weekend. I left Detroit back in 1968 when my parents decided to move my siblings and me to Texas. For years, I dreamt of moving back there. And to this day, it is still a dream.

I'm probably one of the few people in America who still wax nostalgic for the Detroit of 1968. And yet I've learned a long time ago that I can never go back there. Even if I moved back to Michigan tomorrow, it would do me no good for the Detroit of my childhood no longer exists. Detroit has changed a lot since 1968 and not always for the better. When I last visited there in 1987, the stable lower-middle-class neighborhood where I once lived was now a slum. The house I had lived in back in 1968 was covered with graffiti and its windows were boarded up.

Perhaps it is better that I can't go back. That I am forced to make my peace with the present and reconcile myself to life here in Dallas. Dallas, after all, is where most of my best and most recent memories have taken place. It's the place where I first fell in love. The place where I first met a kindred spirit. It is a place that has taken up permanent occupation in my heart close to the spot where Detroit used to be.

I still miss Detroit. But if I ever moved back, I'd miss Dallas too.

And if I ever move to another city, there will come a day when I miss that city too...