During one scene in the film Garden State, Andrew Largeman pontificates on the realities of losing one's sense of "home" after you've moved out and lived in a place of one's own. The idea being, and a timeless one at that, is that you can never really go home again. I don't know how much I really agree with that premise (I don't so much agree with the premise as I know that I understand the notion. I refuse, and perhaps sentimentally so, to relinquish that notion of house and home.), but I did notice another phenomenon recently when I was home for a brief stay in which I think some of the residual effect of this idea of losing home is successfully planted.

Communication between you and your parents can and often is difficult regardless of your relationship with them. What I noticed during this most recent trip, though, is that you can sense that your family adapts, as I'm sure we do as well, to life without you. Behaviors change and voices are altered due to your presence. It's odd because you can feel that there's something of kilter but nothing that would in the least feel threatening or emotionally provocative. It's more often than not just an inkling that not having you around has either freed up a different personality trait in each one of your parents or you are now viewed in terms of being a visitor in every sense of the word (In most cases this would seem to imply an negative connotation, but that's not what I'm driving at. It would seem more likely that now you are viewed as being a visitor only in the sense that you're not staying.) in the home where you grew up. You're still welcome and everything that's theirs is also yours, but you're also likely to witness an evolutionary, perhaps that's being overly dramatic, change.