question:  Why is it ironic that Henry was uncomfortable to see his house rebuilt?
context: There was the usual welcoming crowd for a celebrity, and the usual speeches by the usual politicians who met him at the airport which had once been twenty miles outside of Croton, but which the growing city had since engulfed and placed well within its boundaries. Several of the churches in town had shown indecision as to how to instruct their parishioners to treat him. He had traveled and he had returned and his voyage was very much like the voyages of the great mariners, from Columbus onward—long, dull periods of time passing, passing, and then the arrival. They had rehabilitated, spruced up, almost rebuilt the entire outside and grounds. The head of the American Legion and the chief of police, who had escorted him on this trip from the square, didn't ask to go in with him. He walked up what had once been a concrete path and was now an ornate flagstone path. They held onto each other as if seeking mutual support, the thirty-three-year old woman and ten-year-old boy. So he put him down and told himself that it would all change, that everything would loosen up just as his commanding officer, General Carlisle, had said it would early this morning before he left Washington. Carlisle had said his position was analogous to Columbus', to Vasco De Gama's, to Preshoff's when the Russian returned from the Moon—but more so. They had feared for him, having read of the many launchings gone wrong even in continent-to-continent experimental flight. Without waiting for an answer, he waved his hand—it shook; a ten-year-old boy's hand that shook—and ran from the room and from the house. But they didn't expect it of him; they wouldn't let him; they felt he had changed too much. He saw twin beds separated by an ornate little table with an ornate little lamp, and this looked more ominous a barrier to him than the twelve-foot concrete-and-barbed-wire fence around the experimental station.
output:  He himself was rebuilt, in some sense.
options:  He used to like change, and always encouraged remodeling projects  It used to be his wife that hated change, not Henry.  He himself was rebuilt, in some sense.  He had said he would do the remodeling himself when he got back, but it was done when he arrived.