When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn't the old home you missed but your childhood.

The quote reframes nostalgia as longing for a self rather than a location. Returning to a hometown can expose how places evolve—businesses close, neighborhoods change, people move or die—so the “old home” cannot be recovered materially. What persists is the emotional imprint of childhood: a time when the world felt larger, identities were forming, and experiences were firsts. Ewing’s point is that the ache of homecoming is often grief for irretrievable time, not disappointment with the town. The line also cautions against idealizing the past, suggesting that memory edits and sanctifies earlier life stages more than it preserves accurate geography.