In my childhood, our home was a bustling household of nineteen family members. The house stood on a broad plot of land, filled with memories as expansive as the space itself. One corner of the yard held a small greenhouse overflowing with plants, and beside the well we raised chickens, ducks, and rabbits. Fruit trees surrounded the entrance gate—pomegranates, cherries, mulberries, persimmons, apricots, and chestnuts—marking the passage of seasons throughout my youth.
Beyond the gate, an old zelkova tree welcomed me, beside a pond bordered by an earthen embankment. A quiet stream meandered into a nearby reservoir. The hills surrounding the village, front and back, were my playground. If I followed the back path long enough, I’d reach the mountain, where I often sat next to the embankment at the bottom of that cliff and quietly laid down my worries.
After getting married and becoming a mother, I was never able to return to my hometown. Instead, I summoned it often as the setting in the bedtime stories I told my child. Having grown up hearing those tales, my child longed to see it in person. So one holiday, we finally set a date and made the trip. As we drove, my child voiced a concern—what if everything had changed? The world moves so quickly now that I, too, began to feel a quiet unease.
We arrived at last. Just as my child had feared, the village had changed. The dirt and gravel road was now paved with asphalt. The old house had been replaced by a sleek, modern building. The fruit trees were gone. A family home now stood on the front hill, and the stream had been covered with smooth concrete. It was no longer the hometown I remembered. Thankfully, the cliffside pond remained—and there, for a while, I lost myself in memory. My child, seeing it all for the first time, was delighted by the peaceful scenery.
On the way home, my thoughts tangled. Yes, the modern village was clean and orderly, but I missed what once was. I couldn’t help but feel a quiet sorrow for what had changed.
They say life is a journey through time, and perhaps that’s true. We can never return to the past, and sometimes that truth stings. Yet the places we’ve been remain etched in our hearts, always ready to be reopened. One poet said that memories never grow old, even as the years pass, and so we find ourselves longing for the past. Maybe that’s why I felt such disappointment.
And maybe that’s why, when I look up at the night sky, a deep yearning stirs within me to go to one of those distant stars. Why do I long for the universe, the world of stars? Could I miss a place I’ve never been—unless, at some point, I truly did live there? Just as I long for the way my hometown used to be because of the memories I have from childhood, perhaps the reason we yearn for our heavenly home—though we cannot see the whole world clearly due to the veil of sin—is because we carry within us a faint memory of it.
That place I miss so achingly, the place I long to return to without knowing exactly why, the place that stirs a deep nostalgia from within—it is the kingdom of heaven, my eternal home. Even now, I look to the sky, letting that longing rise once more. And I hold fast to the hope that one day, in that everlasting homeland, I will run and laugh again freely, joyfully with the brothers and sisters I love.