No, really, Toto, there’s NO place like home.

For me, it kinda seems like bizarro Oz going back to Warren. It is a place that is familiar but still very foreign.

I spent most of my first 18 years there, but none of my adult life. So when we took the weekend pilgrimage to the homeland to visit grandparents and the Sib, I realized that I didn’t know what to do there. Where to eat. I knew the streets and where they went–come on it’s simple enough, 8 Mile Road, 9 Mile Road, 10 Mile Road…14 Mile Road, you get the idea.

Going to Mom and Dad’s house is also both familiar and strange. The furniture isn’t the stuff that I grew up with. There is a familiar wackiness. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so wacky when I was living it, but now it is something that I have come to appreciate. Even to embrace.

I used to think that Glinda the Good Witch and Auntie Em were the same (like Ms. Gulch was the same as the Wicked Witch). But that’s not right either.