I've lost track, but it's probably close to 15 years since I visited the town where I was raised. In the late '50s, this bedroom community sprung up in the middle of cornfields. Rows of identical houses, littered with abandoned tricycles, were erected on streets bearing names more often associated with British naval officers than a subdivision in New Jersey. Really strange to be old enough for my childhood to feel so remote, and to revisit places that had once encompassed my entire world and informed my view of it. I felt like a character in a movie fast forwarding in time as a the walls around me aged. Specific neighborhood streets like the ones that lead to our swim club on humid summer days evoked wistful affection. An undercurrent of my childhood was anticipating the future, perpetual excitement induced by thinking about my older self. It was all unknown. Now much less so. Many of the blanks have been filled in. My perspective has also shifted; I live much more in the present, the result of wisdom more than the number of candles on the birthday cake.
On our trail I was tickled to encounter a Halloween parade at the Catholic grammar school I attended. A treat indeed. Later that evening, after we had turned off the lights and gone to bed, my mother awoke to a light on in the TV room. On her way back to bed she used the guest room bathroom and was surprised to find the seat up. There were no male guests in the house that day and I was the last to use the toilet before I retired. The seat was definitely down. My father, the trickster, had visited.
No comments:
Post a Comment