It’s been 14 months since I visited Lexington. I’ve never been away longer. To the other bewilderments of these days I add this one: that I’ve been gone so long from my hometown.

There’s much to recommend the trip I’m making there this weekend: It’s summertime and it’s with my sister. But I approach it tentatively, much as a dental patient probes the tender spot where a tooth has been.

What’s missing from Lexington now is why I ever was in Lexington in the first place — and why I returned so often through the years. What kind of place is Lexington without Mom and Dad?

When people are gone, place remains. But what is place without the people who created it?