Sometimes you really can't go back

I just found out that the house I called home for the first five years of my life burned down recently. And by "down," I mean completely. To the ground. Only a slab was left.  And I have very mixed feelings about this news. I tend to be pretty sentimental about people, places, and objects of importance to my past. But I feel oddly removed from that house. I even tried to force myself to remember events that would surely elicit a sentimental tug at the heart. The first tree I ever climbed was in that yard.  I learned to ride my bike with training wheels in that driveway. The first story I ever wrote was written sitting at a table under that bedroom window. I watched Dorothy Hamill skate in the winter Olympics for the first time while lying on the living room floor and I met my little brother for the first time in that same living room. I learned the value of neighbors in that house, but I also learned the weight of secrets. I learned that home may not always be the safest place, but when you are a kid and you have to leave it, you don't know why, but you want to come back.  Maybe those mixed feelings are the basis for these mixed feelings. And maybe there is just comfort in the fact that when a place leaves you, there is no going back.  A door is just easier to close when it no longer exists.