Normally, any time off of school is a pretty good deal, and going home to score free stuff and have my mom do my laundry isn’t so horrible, either. But over this Thanksgiving break, I was disturbed to discover — just like the old adage says — I can never “go home” again.

No, my family’s house didn’t burn down. My parents aren’t getting a divorce (although sometimes it seemed World War III was ready to break out any minute inside our green Ford Contour). It’s not even that I don’t know anyone there — every time I go back to my hometown, there’s at least always someone who knows my name.

Nothing here has changed.

I have.

It would have been nice if this realization could have waited until I was a little more settled into being at home, but it was knocked into my brain the very first morning of my visit.

It was a Sunday — that meant I had to go to church. This particular Sunday my parents had signed up to be greeters at the 8 a.m. service. My family has been attending this same service at this same church practically since I was born, so for at least the first 18 years of my life I saw the same people populating the pews week in and week out.

And just like clockwork, they came through the door — the little old ladies with scarves tied over their gray hairdos, the tall, stolid man who always sits at the other end of “our” seat in the pews (fourth one up from the back, right side — like any good Lutherans, we sat as far away from the front as possible), even the one woman who I could have sworn was 90 years old when I was 10 came hobbling through the door in her familiar long black coat.

It was like I had never left. My absence seemed irrelevant after watching all the same parishioners shuffle in, seemingly defiant of time, but everyone noticed I had been gone and stopped to chat with me.

One by one, they came through the line and took my hand, asking me how I liked school and how long I was going to be home. I felt the smoothness of their cold, aged skin and saw the wrinkles lining their faces like so many cares throughout the years, and I was awestruck by the utter constancy of my surroundings.

These people had been coming here for decades, keeping the faith — the only difference now was they shook my hand instead of pinching my cheek.

Later, as I settled into my pew, I tried to conjure up the way I experienced church before I left for college. The mood was subdued, and, as always, the big pipe organ began to play a dirge-like hymn; it had all seemed so romantic to me then. I closed my eyes and imagined myself back into the days of Sunday School perfect attendance, Lenten soup suppers and Teens Encounter Christ weekend retreats — back into the days when it was easy for me to believe.

The music, especially this morning, was so simple and pure — “The Lord God is King,” we sang, and as I heard my voice join the rest of the congregation’s I faltered, my voice falling to a whisper.

Not once since I was a little girl had I ever sang so quietly; I usually loved to belt out the hymns. But this time I was stricken dumb by a longing for my past, for the love and devotion I once had to Jesus, Abba, Father, my Lord.

Where did those days go?

The answer slowly dawned upon me as I sat through the sermon, the pastor’s voice registering at a barely audible level: Things just aren’t that simple anymore. I know too much; I’ve seen too much to go back. My childhood version of God doesn’t exist in the real world, and no matter how lost I may feel, that God is not there for me to run back to.

I would only be fooling myself if I tried to return to the fold, no matter how much I might take comfort in gaining psuedo-innocence and feeling “purified.” And just like I cannot return to my old God, I can’t return to my old friends, either.

The night before Thanksgiving, I attended a much-anticipated party with some people I used to be well acquainted with, but I found that, even though we hadn’t seen each other for months, we really didn’t have much to say to each other.

Instead of talking, we filled the spaces with Southern Comfort and “Army of Darkness” watched on mute while the music blared and fresh-out-of-high-school kids flocked about the keg.

Talk about feeling old …

But here in Ames I have all I need. So, for better or worse, this is my home now — at least until I graduate and come back in due time to feel alienated here, as well.