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# Hometown
- URL: https://dianaludwick.com/hometown/
- Published: 2026-06-14T11:29:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T20:07:44.000Z
- Description: “Hometown,” a reminiscence of place over time, as memories of past and present intermingle. Written Sunday, June 14, based on a longer piece written 2022, poem 165 in a series of 365 poems written by Diana Ludwick in 2026. Photo, "Thank You!," by Diana Ludwick (c) 2026.
- Author: Diana Ludwick
- Tags: 2026 Poetry Challenge, Poems, June, Sunday, #Migrated-1792872215677, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-10-24 20:03

Living in the same town   
wherein you grew up  
provides ample opportunities   
for deja vu moments.  
  
Because moments,  
monumental or minute,   
unfold in the same spaces.  
  
Connected by physicality  
spaced over the decades.  
  
The last time   
I felt the pull of the past,   
was when my work laptop died.  
  
I dutifully drove to the spot   
on the map that proclaimed   
to be the "FedEx store."  
  
And yet,  
when I park,   
an eerie sense of familiarity  
overcomes me.  
  
Of course.   
I've been here before.  
  
I walk under the dated arches,   
Through the faux front columns  
And recall, in bits and flashes.  
  
I’ve been in this spot  
In this exact storefront.  
  
In 1990, it's springtime.  
I'm there **—**   
here **—**   
with my mother.  
  
We are here with a third person,  
our Japanese exchange student  
and extended house guest.  
  
We deliberately, quietly  
reverently browsed   
the aisles of what was then  
"Beauty World,"  
a store which,   
a decade before Sephora  
claimed to be the county’s   
fanciest makeup store.  
  
I recall to this moment  
**—**standing in the rain   
with a clunker Lenovo**—**  
the powdery fragrance of  
face creams  
potions   
Christian Dior   
Channel.  
  
Our guest   
had cooed with delight  
that spring day.  
  
“What ‘a deal!’”   
She exclaimed,   
proud both  
of her usage of   
American slang,  
and her find of   
classic French parfum  
at half the price   
it would fetch in Tokyo.  
  
My mom, meanwhile  
feigned comfort  
while scanning disturbingly   
high-end pots and applicators.  
  
Mom's eyebrows   
gave her away;  
I could read in her arches:  
Frivolous!  
Inappropriate!  
Inaccessible niceties.  
Oh what luxuries.  
  
She warily eyed   
a nearby display  
with a Rockettes line of  
gleaming white tubes.  
  
Gold encircled Clarins  
hand and nail treatment cream,  
a brand I'd never heard of,  
stood tall   
with pert red serif font  
that foretold its importance.  
  
“No price tags,”   
She had whispered  
ominously,  
stooping down to me.  
“Must be expensive.”  
  
She risked pulling   
at her heart, and her wallet,  
her unvarnished nails lingering on  
a gold tube of Clarins lip rouge.  
  
The attendant behind the counter  
threw my mom a passing glance   
as she swept by to a regular patron,  
as if to say,  
"You can't afford to know the price   
and you're not worth my time."  
  
“I’ll keep my Revlon 'Cherries in the Snow,'”  
Mom mumbled,   
more to convince herself  
than any bystanders.  
  
I recall her stepping back,   
placing the case to the counter.  
  
And now I cross the threshold   
of the old makeup shoppe, now FedEX  
and I hand my bum equipment over the counter  
and I sign on the invoice  
and I ship off a new decade of memories   
in a flat pack box  
as I turn on my heel  
and exit another wormhole to personal history  
the kind that open only   
in one's home town.