Memory Lane

This afternoon, I was picking up supplies for my martial arts studio. I’m usually in a huge rush but got off on a slow, somewhat lazy, meandering start this morning with em (aka Scout.) This store is a few miles from the place where I grew up till I was eleven years old. I decided to cruise by for a trip down memory lane.

I passed the parking lot of the old, and no longer there, Alpha Beta grocery store. Our family shopped there. I remembered that this was the place where I decided to ask my Mom if there was really a Santa. I don’t recall the exact words she used but she confirmed that no, there was not an actual person who came down the chimney and left gifts but that the spirit of Santa lives in the hearts of the parents who want to give their kids that sense of magic and wonder that they themselves experienced as children. I smiled thinking that similar words to these I used with my kids.

I passed what the neighborhood called “the little liquor store” and remembered many trips there with my sisters and or friends, with dime in hand, to decide if I would get candy or one of those super cheap toys they sold. My favorite toy being the one with the nail and bloody gauze that you wrapped around your finger so that it looked like a nail had gone through, been left there, and bandaged anyway.

My old house looked pretty much the same; even the same color. Our next-door neighbors seem to be the same ones (or at least the part that stayed after the divorce) as the wooded family sign out front signifies. The house where we liked to skateboard because of the big slopping driveway made me laugh out loud. Sure all the other driveways were level but the Murphy’s driveway was at an ever so slightly downward angle with about two feet at the end that sloped just a bit more than that. Not nearly the “hill” I imagined.

There was an alleyway on the next block that none of the kids I knew would ever walk down. It was not paved, all weedy and overgrown. No one ever went in more than a few feet even when severely dared. Why? Well, there was quicksand in there of course. Everyone knew that!!! The closest I ever got to it was riding my bike in from the other side that was paved, getting that scary tingling sensation of danger and promptly being chased and bitten on my heal by a dog. Serves me right, tempting fate like that. It’s still not paved and it is overgrown but with these long tall super green grasses that say, “come on in, explore, and play.”

I had lots more come to me that I might share another time but basically I got the sense of roots and first times. First steps, first throws, first… fights, bike rides, school, broken bones, friends, kisses, and so forth and so on. That place had a hand in molding me and I had a hand in molding it, just an ordinary neighborhood. Everyone has that place with all kinds of memories. Where we are now, literally and figuratively, will become that place of memories that later, can be brought out, pondered, laughed about, cried over or just looked at in complete wonder.