Another Page in the Book

I had the opportunity to swing through my old home town the other day and I have to say, I was pretty disappointed. It wasn't the way I had remembered it at all.

Everything seemed smaller than I remembered, even the trees. And that struck me as strange because I would think that in all this time, the trees should have grown so much more. But the trees I remember as being so tall, now hang low; overgrown and sagging under their own weight.

I drove along, passing houses that were a lot more boxy than I remembed. As I got closer to my old neighborhood, I drove down the same road I used to walk along to get to my old elementary school. Far down at the end of this road, it bends off to the left and in my mind, this bend is MILES from the side street that leads to my old road. But now when I had reached the side street, I'm stunned that I could see the bend from where I was. Instead of miles, it was only a few blocks away. How could this be? I knew I was on the right road but it felt like my depth perception was way, way off.

I turned down the side street and this felt odd too. This road was also much shorter. Not only was it much shorter, the houses were squished tighter together than they used to be. Weirder than this, the houses seemed strangely close to the road. It was almost claustrophobic, like being in a supermarket where the isles are too narrow.

When I reached my old road, it was a shadow of the way it exists in my mind. It looked like an oddly distorted reflection. Things looked vaguely familiar, but nothing was quite right. The house I grew up in, which I clearly remember, was hard to find. I had to count the houses from the end of the road just to pick it out. The color was wrong and the large trees out front were long gone. Even the lamp post at the end of the driveway was missing.

The park in the center of the street, where I used to play, was about half the size that I remember. The trees I used to climb, like all of the trees I had passed, were overgrown and unkempt. The palatial front yards where I used to play are now a fraction of the size of those in my mind.

There wasn't a soul outside. The whole neighborhood was quiet, the kind of uncomfortable quiet that you not only hear, but the kind you also feel. It was like walking into an empty house when you knew there should be people around. But there were only echos.

Maybe it was because it was a weekday, but something told me this place was a lot more lifeless than it had once been. It was all pretty unsettling.

I think the most disappointing thing was that I didn't see my family there. I think I somehow expected to see Mom leaving in the old Jeepster to go to the A and P. My brother should have been dribbling his basketball in the driveway. And my sisters and I should have been hanging out around the front porch or climbing trees or… something, anything.

And Dad. Dad should have been whistling as he paced by his grill at the end of the driveway, wearing his hat and matted sweater. And maybe, if he somehow managed to see me, he would have smiled and waved, somehow knowing it was me, while the younger me was running around the yard or hanging around him, waiting for a sample.

But none of that happened.

In my mind, my life is made up of volumes of books sitting on a shelf. Everything I’ve ever done, everything I will ever do, is written in these books. In my mind, there is no yesterday or today, it is all happening now, all happening at once. Everything past or present, is as real as as when the words were first put down on paper. Time is somehow meaningless. And just like any other book, the words don't disappear just because the cover is closed. All you have to do is open it to any page and everything is right there.

But when I experience things like this, where things aren't the way I remember, I begin to think that maybe time isn't meaningless.

Deep down though, I know better. I just haven’t figured out how it all fits. It is all part of the same puzzle; part of the same story. Somewhere, that family I remember is still living those things somewhere, while each of us as older versions of ourselves are experiencing our lives today.