"You Can't Go Home Again....Or Can You?

I started reading Thomas Wolfe's "You can't go home again" this week. Although his reasons for not being able to return home are much different than mine the problem still exists, that is, I don't know if I can go home.
I left Dayton, Ohio before I had reached my 18th birthday and headed for Norman, Oklahoma to begin my matriculation at the University of Oklahoma. Nearly 1000 miles away from where I had spent all my childhood, it didn't seem like any major journey to me at the time.
I piled everything I owned into my cramped Triumph SpitFire and through my rear view mirror took my last look at a place that I would no longer call home.
Was it just my free spirit wanting to break loose from the tethers that I felt were holding me back? Were there relationships that I felt I must escape and only a swift and permanent departure would be my only salvation? I didn't know and I didn't care. I was history. Gone Adios.
I did return for the next two summers to spend a month or two to earn some money to help pay my tuition for the following school years, but even then my bags stayed packed, my days were spent working and my nights were spent drinking.
After that, the visits came only every 3 or 4 years and lasted for 2 days at the most.
There hasn't been a Christmas spent in Dayton in almost 40 years. I have attended only one highschool reunion in those same 40 years. I still have two brothers that live there and I stay in contact with them, but I have only one or two friends left there and I probably wouldn't recognize them if I sat down beside them.
What is it that defines home as home? Your birthplace? Where you spent your childhood? Where you presently receive your mail?
I have friends today in Dallas who have never lived anywhere further away than a few miles from where they were born. Some have even moved back into their childhood homes. I'm sure the same is true for some of the people I grew up with in Dayton.
Whenever I have the chance I ask about places that I remember as a child. Although there seems to be a fog that obliterates a portion of those years, some of the memories are vivid.
I can still recall popular hangouts and if I close my eyes can even taste the hamburgers at the Goodey Goodey, but yet I couldn't tell you who I went to the senior prom with, if in fact I went.
Over the years, I have lived in many different cities and towns and several different states. Each location that I have hung my hat, I have called home. But, can I go back there? Can I go home again? Probably not.
I guess I'll always be 'a ramblin man'.