Old Haunts And The Common Good

“Some things become irrevocable.  And change more than just your nature.” ~ tetheredto.

Old Haunts And The Common Good

  ~ by OneMoreOption

I’m alone this morning, having safely transported various family members to locales where they can visit old friends.

I’m staying at my mother’s home, the home where I was raised.

Last night, I decided to drive by and see old places I have not seen in 20 years.

Why do we go back and visit old places where we were formed?  And why would we write about those experiences?

I grew up in one of the greenest places on Earth . . . literally.  Trees and bushes grow huge if left to themselves.  Houses appear dwarfed by the rebellious trees and landscapes.  The landscape is in a regular competition with man made structures. 

I drove to a city nearby, a city I had not been to in many years. Where the streets used to end, they had been widened and extended.  The “edges of town” were now somewhere in the middle.

I drove there to see an old home I had not seen in 20 years, a home where my first love’s family lived.  I only visited there because I knew they had moved out several years ago, so I would not be intruding on their privacy.

In thinking to myself, I was trying to figure out why I wanted to see it again.

One of the reasons I write is because I forget things . . . important things.  So, writing allows me to describe and remember personal memories and ideas that would otherwise fade in clarity over time.

Part of me wanted to see these old haunts because I wanted to assure myself they actually existed.  The memories are so old and distant that I wanted to assure myself the places were real . . . even if my memories have waxed rose-colored over time.

I drove up to the home I had known.

The home was very different, not because my memory was incorrect, but because the new owners had painted it an unenthusiastic shade of yellow.  They had converted the garage to a family room.  They’d poured a cement foundation through a third of the backyard, likely enlarging the master bedroom and bath.  As was the trend in the 1990s through 2007, they’d decided to extend the house toward the lot limits, to create more square footage and less yard.

Some things remained the same.  The old front door and lamp appeared to be the same. 

I thought, “The building, the stage, is not the source of magic.  The magic is found in the cast of characters.  And without the cast, the stage is hollow and lonely for me.”

With so many things changed and remodeled, it took me several minutes to confirm whether this formerly small home was the correct home I was looking for.  To orient myself, I walked about 150 feet down the street where a small park used to be.

Sure enough, the park was still there.  Calling it a “park” is kind of ambitious – it’s about 20 feet wide and 50 feet deep in the middle of a dense subdivision, a green space set aside in the subdivision plan.  Now the “park” is overgrown with bushes taller than me.  There’s no place to walk in this “park.”  No grass.  It’s more of a place where neighborhood kids can hide to drink beers or tell secrets. 

But nevertheless, the park was just down from her house, where I expected it to be.  I found the one bench in the park, a bench where we sat when she told me I was no longer a person she wanted to make time for in her life.  She was not the last person to communicate that kind of decision to me, but she was the first significant person to communicate that decision to me.

I looked around to see if there was something incidental I could take from these places, something to remember them by.  But there was no souvenir I could take that was not perishable or valuable, so I left each place alone.

From there, I drove, trying to feel my way back to my old high school.  I found my way without missing a turn, even though the landscape and buildings had changed dramatically.

It was late on a Friday evening, and I didn’t expect anything to be open.  But a local professional drama troupe was performing in the old auditorium where I had been a Thespian years before.  I walked into the foyer, to see a painting I had not seen in many years, a painting I’d created that had become a part of the auditorium’s permanent decor.  The painting had been moved, but it was still in the foyer.  I took a picture of it.  I would have liked to have walked backstage, to see the places where so many important moments of my life had occurred, but a new show was in progress, and I did not want to be disrespectful or disruptive, so I walked away.

I walked to my old art classroom and looked into the windows of that two-story room where my art teacher had introduced me to so many concepts about art, composition, color, and history.

I walked past all the temporary buildings (what school doesn’t have temporary buildings these days?) and looked into the “smoker’s courtyard” where high school kids would smoke between classes.  The area was fenced off and re-assigned to various maintenance vehicles.

When I attended my high school, it had over a thousand students.  It serviced a very large area.  A few years after I left, the school’s district was cut in two and a new high school took on half of the school’s population.

When I attended the school, it serviced two cities.  I lived on the far edge of one city it serviced.  And she lived 20 mintues away on the far end of the other city it serviced.  In most situations, she and I would have never met.  If we’d been a few years younger, she and I would have never met.  One more neighborhood further, she and I would have never met.  It would have saved me a lot of worry, concern, and heartache if she and I had never met.

But that’s not the way it happened.  As it happened, she and I met.  And she changed my world . . . permenantly . . . irrevocably.  And hopefully, her influence on me did some good for others.  Hopefully, her influence has done for others a fraction of the good it has done for me.

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