Last week, I went back to the town I was raised in, and simultaneously, accidentally took a trip to Nostalgia. It’s not a place I’ve ever been terribly anxious to visit, but there I went, anyway, just like Alice down the rabbit hole. She couldn’t help herself. Neither could I.
I took the State Road east, and for the first half hour, it’s a congested mess. There are some folks – mostly politicians and/or developers/builders - who believe retail is the answer. The only result we got for their ‘vision’ was congestion, vacant buildings, and peaceful open farmland that will be no more.
Once the State Road east/west crosses the State Road north/south, it’s an entirely different story, and a relief. Fields after fields of corn. Native bachelor buttons line the road. A roadside stand piled high with that corn for sale. Even the few stop signs that pop up as you get closer to my Small Town are still there, still the same. It’s Middle American at its best, and I’d choose to live nowhere else.
So I drove that section, eastbound, and thought and thought and got lost in those thoughts, no traffic to wake me from my reverie….
I have flashbacks about the twice a year trips we’d take from my Small Town to the Big City for school clothes and shoes. That same State Road, then the one heading south, to the only shopping mall that existed in the ‘60’s. I can remember riding in the car in silence, watching and tracing the abandoned railroad track that paralleled that road, wondering what happened to that train and the people on it, dreaming of the day I’d be grown up, living in the Big City on my own, working in the department store we were headed to visit.
48 years later, the drive over is comfortingly the same. Nothing has changed. Given the tumult in my life, that’s a welcome sight.
I pass the street my 4th grade teacher lived on. I pass the big fancy house that the “rich” people lived in. I pass Davis Park and remember summer day camp there and decide to take a chance and drive through my old neighborhood. I haven’t been there in 10 years.
One of the things that surprises me is how narrow the streets feel. The other observation, which, why it didn’t occur to me until just then escapes me, is that all the streets were named after either trees or flowers or plants. Dogwood, Laurel, Redwood, Oakwood, Ivy. Given my immersion in the gardening world, I find that ironic, and wonder if, subliminally, these old streets had any impact on my future life. I’d always given my maternal farmer grandparents the credit for that.
So I turn the corner onto Tulip Street and slow down….it’s only two blocks long, and “my” house is on the end….and “my” house looks fine. Better than fine. The new owners are taking good care of it. I sit at the end of the street for a second or two and breathe a sigh of relief.The next stop before my appointment with my attorney is the cemetery. I am ashamed to say I forgot where She is. I took a wrong turn, got out of the car, and wandered aimlessly about, plastic flowers in hand, in 95° heat and flip-flops and a black dress, until a caretaker on a mower stopped and asked if I was lost. I guess I’m good at looking lost.
But what happened is one of those conversations you have with complete strangers that changes your day. That also happened to me once in early 2007, too, crossing a downtown street as I was leaving a job I hated. Strangers should not underestimate their impact. This caretaker engaged me in conversation for maybe 10 minutes, and had I not had an appointment, I’m sure I would’ve stayed longer. No matter. He made me feel like a normal, desirable, intelligent human being, and that’s what’s difficult to hang on to when you live as I do right now. I don’t know who he is, but I’d like to thank him for it. Such a simple thing, but the direction of my thoughts, spiraling downward for months, was changed by that conversation. I felt like I’d known him all my life.
So I leave him, and take the right turn, and find Her. Her spot, too, looks familiar and unchanged, or as unchanged and “normal” as 10 years can be with no one to ground you or tell you that you are doing fine, better than most people would be doing in the same situation and not fucking up everything you touch.
From there, to downtown.
I have known this attorney (and I say “this” attorney because I must know at least 10) since the early ‘60’s, since grade school. There are no presumptions or pretenses between us. That, too, is a relief. He is he, and I am I, and once the business is taken care of and lots of papers signed, we retreat to the Country Club for a civilized lunch and off the record discussions of the hell we’ve both been through over the years. Attorney-client privilege is a good thing.
Is it possible you have to go back before you can go forward?
I didn’t need to go back…I’m tiring of all the rabbit holes and confusion and wrong turns….but in this case, I’m glad I went.
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