I get ‘memory lane’ now. I really do. Yesterday afternoon I literally drove down memory lane, back through the neighborhood I grew up in. I wish I’d had a camera with me, but I’m sure one of these days I’ll go back with one. It’s a strange thing to be only 25 (still getting used to that number) and so nostalgic, but when you move around as much as I did, you can’t help it. Driving around yesterday I realized that I always figured I’d be back there someday, in what capacity I’m not sure, just back.
It’s surprising what changes, and what doesn’t. The Wawa is gone, but the post office is still there. All my friends’ houses are still there, the swim club, too. The place where I cut my knee and had to get stitches, the streets I used to trick or treat on, ride my bike on, the streets I took to get to school. It’s all still there, and I was disappointed and pleased at the same time how much of it was still the same. After 10 years, you don’t expect things to be the way they were, but you’re happy when they are. I drove by the old house, slowly, which probably made the people who live there now a little suspicious. I just wanted to see it. I half expected the plastic skeleton to be hanging from the big tree in the front yard like we always had on Halloween, but that tree was gone long before we moved.
Cliche as it is, you can’t go home again.
