Thomas Wolfe said you can never go home again. Ok well, not exactly. He wrote a book called You Can't Go Home Again. Either way it's been my experience that he was onto something. I had a visit with my mom yesterday. Back to the house I left after my father died. The house he grew up in and that his mother died in. The house my aunt now owns but I'm sure would much rather sell. She doesn't because my mother still lives there along with my sister and her husband (a bizarre dynamic I'll not get into).

The place hasn't changed much since my dad died eleven years ago. So much time has passed but the house remains the same. The same pots and pans in the cupboard, the same cutlery in the drawers. My mom sits in the same chair in the kitchen my father used to sit in. The toilet water still runs long after you flush it and the house is still oppressively dark inside.

There are some exterior differences like the little porch my brother-in-law built over the old concrete stairs and the new gravel in the alley, not to mention the many freshly built houses squeezed into The Port's last open spaces. The Port is short for Port Norfolk; the little south-east area of Dorchester that crowds up to the Neposet River and Dorchester Bay.
The folks in neighboring areas such as Southie or Wollaston would sometimes refer to a resident of Dorchester as a Dot Rat. You could be an even finer specimen of said breed by being a resident of The Port and as such you'd be a Port Rat. Not very imaginative I know, but there were no Southie Rats or Roxbury Rats that I know of so we were proud of our 'heritage'. Especially since my dad would tell us that in his day, he was called a Port Rat too.

The biggest change to The Port is the beautiful new park that opened up in 2001. It's called the Lower Neponset River Trail and I walked it with my mom and her dog yesterday. I was surprised to find there's an entrance to it just around the corner from the house. The sign for the new park stands at the very spot where there used to be a little dock of flounder fishing boats. For $7 they'd take you just out of Boston Harbor, supply you with rod and reel and fillet anything you happen to catch. My dad and I would pack a lunch, buy some sea worms from the local tackle shop and make an afternoon of it. Those days on the water with my pop are some of the fondest memories I have. Where now there is green lawn and a paved bike trail there once stood a ramshackle ticket booth surrounded by piles of old lobster traps. The Flounder Fleet shut down before my dad died. It seems an age has past since those warm Saturdays when the place was alive with people looking to spend some time on the sea. Standing there again was somewhat surreal but I was happy just to be there breathing the salty air. Before the park opened the area was locked up behind tall barbed wire fences and it had been many years since I last squeezed through the gates to wander the pier alone. The tide was out during our walk so things weren't as pretty as they could be but I didn't really notice. My mom and I talked about nothing and I snapped off a bunch of pictures. The trail is gorgeous and it made me both happy and sad. Happy because it's a wonderful thing to be able to stroll along the salt marshes and river. It's amazing to see how much nature remains despite the interstate on one side and the constant rumble of jets heading into Logan overhead. The sad part of course is I wish my dad was walking there with us. I've been missing him something fierce lately and this brings me back to the 'you can never go home again' thought. I can and do go home again but it's a strange place to me now. I don't know how to explain it. My mom is still there and I love her and my sister but after I visit I am overcome with melancholy that takes me days to shake off.

Anyway, here are the pictures I took.