I took a solo trip to my childhood hometown

what I learned & why I recommend you do, too

Aug 04, 2024

I’ve moved a lot in my life: the “30+ houses in 15 towns and 5 different states” sort of a lot. Maybe that’s why I find something to love about every town I visit - who knows, with my record, I could end up living there one day.

I’m highly attuned to place-based memories and nostalgia, too. I dream often about my old homes, the different schools I attended, the neighborhoods I played in. My siblings and I regularly reminisce about the different houses we lived in, and my own kids, who’ve also moved quite a lot, do the same.

It’s interesting to me, then, how many of the people closest to me don’t have the same experience. Most of my friends, my spouse, even my former spouse, had this thing in common): they all lived in the same town (often the same house) for basically their entire childhoods. I find that fascinating, and I’m not sure if I’m envious or not.

But I do know that when I think about my childhood hometown where I lived from ages three through twelve - and particularly, the house I lived in for the last six years of that - I feel a wistful pang of longing. That town, Sault Ste. Marie, a historic small city in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, set just across the St. Mary’s River from a city by the same name in Canada, feels like my home more than any other place I’ve spent time— even though I’ve now spent much more time in other places.

I’ve been back to “The Soo” maybe half a dozen times since becoming an adult, always with other people—my kids, siblings, spouse—and usually for a quick trip. We typically act like tourists while we’re there, eating ice cream and watching freighters go through the locks. But I’ve long harbored a fantasy about going back for multiple days and really immersing myself in the place the way I used to experience it.

And the more I thought about it, the more I felt I wanted to do this trip alone.

Nothing against my family, of course. My kids are fun travel companions, Eric is always up for any level of adventure including puttering nostalgia tourism, and my siblings would probably want to see all the same stuff as me anyway. But there’s a certain self-consciousness and eagerness to go with the flow I feel when I’m traveling with other people—the sort we probably all need to have in order to be decent travel partners.

This time, I simply craved a different kind of experience.

I wanted to immerse myself in my old stomping grounds on my own terms and under my own steam, without any worry about other people getting tired of walking miles every day, or having to explain why I would sometimes stand silently in the middle of the sidewalk for minutes at a time, just feeling.

So last week, I took advantage of a gap in my schedule after visiting my new tea shop, and went back to my hometown - all alone - for two nights.

Here were some of the highlights:

I visited my old library.

Does everyone else feel the most nostalgia when they enter their childhood library? One thing I love about old libraries is that, unlike your childhood home that someone else lives in, you can just walk right in. And libraries don’t tend to change a lot over the years, either. Aside from some new carpet and paint colors, mine - Bayliss Public Library - was very much the same as I remembered it, including this cool pit in the children’s section where you could (and still can!) hang out and read.

The shelves were still very much the same, too, colorful metal shelving standing on an angle, and I found myself drawn back into the same area of the stacks where I used to hang out, the 600s and 700s in the Dewey Decimal System where you’ll find books about arts and crafts, food, gardening and the like.

Suddenly I spied a binding that looked familiar.

Baton Twirling! A Complete Illustrated Guide! Friends, I checked out this exact book multiple times around the age of 8 or 9. (What a disappointment it turned out to be when I got older and realized my school didn’t actually have a majorette team.)

There were multiple other books I clearly remembered having checked out more than once, too: books on how to make musical instruments, no-sew costume tutorials, holiday treats. It’s interesting to me that this was the area I most clearly remembered visiting as a child, and to this day it’s the first place I go at the library. I love reading fiction, but nothing captures my imagination quite so much as the possibility of learning how to do or make something myself.

(Incidentally, when I chatted with the children’s librarian on my way out, she mentioned that she pretty regularly culls the books that haven’t been checked out in a while. So even today, there’s at least one child out there poring over the same book about baton twirling that I devoured over and over, nearly forty years ago. That makes me smile to think about.)

Anyway, after I got done wandering around the children’s section, deeply inhaling every few moments to absorb that old book smell into my very cells, I tried to wedge myself into one of the low tables to work on my book manuscript. Hunching over my computer wasn’t conducive to good editing, though, so I finally gave up and headed to the adult section.

And at first, that was weird. I rarely set foot in adult section after the age of five or so, when my mom deemed me mature enough to look after myself in the kids’ section, so it had a sense of being both totally familiar yet also, not really for me. But after a good two hours sitting in there working, I eased in. Maybe next time I’ll even get up the nerve to browse the stacks.

I visited my old elementary school.

From blazing-hot metal slides to squeaky pencil sharpeners to the indefinable food smell of the cafeteria, thinking about my elementary school brings back an overwhelming number of sense memories.

Jefferson Elementary was a circa 1932 building with cool old linoleum floors and tile and it was the location much of the action over six years of my childhood, from learning my multiplication tables and memorizing all 50 state capitols, to making clay pots and writing my very first book: Help, There’s A Skunk In My Bathtub.

Jefferson closed down decades ago, and soon after, much of the playground was sold off to a housing development. Google Maps says the building is a church now, but peeping through a window, I detected no signs of churching—instead I saw what looked like the early stages of a renovation.

I also saw the same tile and linoleum that’s been etched into my memory so deeply that it took no effort to put myself back in time to when I would have been roaming those halls myself. I was simply, immediately that girl, in that time and place, just like no years had passed at all.

I walked through my old neighborhood.

And when I say I “walked through” it, let me explain further.

From my vintage motel, I walked through downtown, past the streets housing my old church and library until I got to my house - the same route I would have taken four decades ago. That meant passing over bridge near my old house, where a fast-moving canal leads to a very cool, red sandstone hydroelectric station built around 1900. How many times did I see this view as I walked or biked over the bridge way back when?

Once on my block, I walked (slowly) past my old house from one direction. Then I turned around and walked (very slowly) past from the other direction. Then I crossed the street and stood in front of my old playmate Susan’s house and looked at it from that direction.

I walked down the alley behind my old house in both directions as well, so I could re-capture both how it felt to walk down the alley toward my best friend Jackie’s house and what it felt like to return home.

Jackie and I were texting throughout one of these visits, and I was literally sending her photos of trees and saying “Remember when we used to climb that tree?” Fortunately I had chosen just the right person to share the moment with. She texted right back, "Oh my goodness, that’s absolutely the same tree!”

I walked past my old house on three separate occasions, actually - early afternoon, late afternoon, and dusk; at which point I messaged Jackie “this seems so appropriate - just about the time our moms would have been calling us in for the night.”

And as I reluctantly walked back to my motel, I was rewarded with one of the most incredible sunsets I’ve ever seen.

I walked - a lot - and just took it all in.

After parking my car at the motel, I didn’t move it again until I checked out two days later, preferring the view and pace from my feet. That meant a lot of walking - I took more than 42,000 steps in two days, about twenty miles - which meant I got to see a lot of things I hadn’t even realized I would remember: the mansion I dreamed about living in one day (as majestic as ever), old friends’ houses I’d been to sleepovers in, the bank building where my dad worked, other storefronts that were immediately familiar.

Not all the sights were happy ones. The Presbyterian church my mom and I attended for six years, a lovely old building where I sang in the choir and learned to love tea during coffee hour, burned down in 2000; its replacement looks very nice, but of course it’s not the same.

And the absolutely gorgeous courthouse building brought back a particularly unpleasant memory of being about seven years old and having to stand in front of a judge to tell him whether I wanted to live with my mom or dad after their divorce.

Early 80s family court, what were you thinking?

Even that memory made me smile, though, because while I know that’s why I was at the courthouse that day - perhaps the only time I ever visited it - what I really remember was acting out the dance number from Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing” video while waiting outside for someone to call me in.

Can’t you just see little me, dancing my heart out in my Sunday best?

I acted like a grown-up, too.

One of the most fun things about my trip is that I got to have my old town both ways. I felt like a kid again in so many ways, but I also got to call the shots, going wherever I liked whenever I liked (though little Meagan may have felt I squandered that opportunity, since I was in bed by 9:30 both nights.)

Before check-out, I got a tea from a local cafe and walked across the street to the lovely park that houses the Soo Locks. The park had just opened and was quiet, so I sat down and watched the river flow by for a while, thinking about all the times I had sat on a bench watching the river with my mother, run around in the grass, or stuck my hand in the same fountain you see over my shoulder.

The grown-up side of me got to appreciate “The Soo” in a way I didn’t really have the context for as a kid. Of course, I learned about the historical importance of Sault Ste. Marie as a child: it’s the oldest city in Michigan; and the lock system, which allows ships to bypass the rapids in the St. Mary’s River and travel between the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes, has been an integral part of our economy. I understand that importance much better now, as well as how early in our nation’s history 1668, the year Sault Ste. Marie was founded, really was.

But there’s an intangible quality to that appreciation, too. Seeing The Soo through grown-up eyes, it now makes sense to me why I feel a certain affinity for other Great Lakes port cities. There’s a grittiness to them, a weathered and sometimes, even a somewhat run-down pluck, that makes me love them all the more — and tells me something about myself as well.

Overall, the most surprising thing about this trip was just how few surprises it held. I felt completely at home in my old hometown, as though I’d just left. Walking through the neighborhoods where I used to play and dream, immersing the place that was the backdrop of my becoming a person, I remembered things I didn’t even realize I’d forgotten, and was relieved to find those memories so close at hand.

It reminded me not only of who I am, but how I got to be who I am.

To many people my hometown is just a stop on a tourist itinerary, or a rarely-remembered piece of history, or perhaps someplace that’s not even worth visiting. Your hometown is likely the same. But these places we spent time as children are important: they made up the fabric of who we are.

Nobody else has to ‘get it’ for that to be true.

If you’re in a season of your life where you can swing a solo trip to your hometown, I highly recommend you do so ASAP. And if it’s not possible for you now (it took over a decade after first getting the idea for me to pull it off), don’t let it slip off your “one day” list. Make space for that little itch to become a real thing. It’s worth it.

It may seem frivolous or not worth the travel time and budget to peek in the windows of your elementary school, play in your favorite old playground, peruse the shelves of your childhood library, or walk down your old street — but I’ve had few vacations in my life that I’ve enjoyed as much - and none where I’ve felt quite so much like myself.