Who says you can't go back?

Recently, I moved back to a city I had left 13 years before. I found a job in a neighborhood where I had lived for many years but had left almost 25 years before. My life disproves Thomas Wolfe's famous observation that you can't go home again.

In fact, I came back to Philadelphia and left a career in which I had built a significant reputation precisely for that purpose-- in order to come home. Parts of my life have closed seamlessly over the 13 years I was away, like water closing over a stone.

What's interesting is being back in the neighborhood where I went to college and graduate school and lived as a young woman. I haven't spent a lot of time here quite literally for decades. When I go to work, I step back in time. I see the world through two sets of eyes. For the most part, I navigate through the present. But sometimes, I am reminded of what used to be. It's like a palimpsest.

OK, that's a great crossword puzzle word: what does it mean? A palimpsest is a parchment that's been scraped down and written over. You can read both documents-- the newer one, and the older one that no longer exists but is still legible. When I look at the corner of 34th and Walnut, mostly I see the busy, 24 hour Starbuck's. Once in a while, I remember Cy's Penn Luncheonette, known to everyone as The Dirty Drug. If I had been here all along, the intervening years might make my memories less vivid.