Famous author, Thomas Wolfe, once wrote, “You can’t go home again.” However, after a year of renting in the city, I went back for a visit over Thanksgiving, and while some things had changed from what I knew a year ago, it still felt like home.

I’m not sure if it was the anticipation of familiar routines, traditions and faces that marked the transformation, but as I arrived and was greeted by the usual cries of the family dog, it felt as though I wasn’t visiting at all but had only run a brief errand.

Everything looked and seemed the same as I entered the house and roamed the familiar rooms, but then that could have been just a little holiday magic. After all, the holidays do seem to make us remember only the happy times from simpler years, and I couldn’t help but smile when remembering the ones I’d spent there.

During the weeklong visit, I settled into the usual holiday traditions and had a great time making new memories from the familiar routines I’d established with friends and family. We surely made quite a few during the brief visit; however, some were more welcome than others.

Speaking of one such memory, I don’t think my family intended to include a rogue Christmas tree into the mix this year, but it was great to hear my brothers laughing heartily again as we watched it plummet to the floor narrowly missing mom’s “good” lamps. Oops!

I guess that’s one of my favorite parts about visiting home. I never know what is going to happen while I’m there; it could be business as usual or a completely novel experience.

Thankfully, some things never change, though, like the creaking of my dad’s favorite chair, the smells of my mother’s cooking or the way laughter fills a room when I’m with my closest friends. It was these things that opened my eyes to a new insight and made me disagree with Wolfe (for the most part). It’s not the place at all that makes a home and keeps it as such but the small moments that fill the time we spend there and that remain when we return.

Wolfe may have been partially right, though. After all, the home I knew is no longer the home I visit, and even surrounded by the familiar, I had to admit that things had changed. Although, with a little help, I found my place easily in the new as well.

Eventually, like every visit, this one came to an end. After I said my goodbyes, I hit the road with feelings of sadness and guilt plaguing me as I reflected on the memories made on the drive back. However, upon entering my apartment, I experienced a new feeling I wasn’t expecting. I had finally found my own home in a tiny apartment in Chicago and it sure felt good to be there again. When visiting old homes of the past, does it still feel like home to you?