Everything I Used To Know

We made it back. This visit was more relaxed and enjoyable than most of our previous visits. We still didn't have time to see everyone but we did get to see some people we haven't seen in like ten or fifteen years. That was pretty nice. We also drove around our old town a lot more than we have in the past. I was uncomfortable with how everything has changed so much but I guess that is just progress. Everyone from rural America has to watch the evolution of their little town from one generation to the next.

No one warned me how odd it was going to feel to see absolutely no trace of the woods I played in as a child at the edge of town or the dozen new houses that have been built on the country road I grew up on. Our elders can't really prepare us for growing older. We watch them do it but we don't understand it until we are going through it ourselves. It was if someone erased a part of my life and redrew it. It was hard to swallow. It always is.

Most people looked a little older and a little more weathered than they had the last time we were there. A little more tired. A little less like the people we used to know. Some people looked entirely different. Children grow up. People grow old. It is an uncomfortable thing when you aren't around for the evolution. It is very dramatic when you only see it in two or three year intervals. Very few people remained just how I remember them. I suppose it is the same for people seeing us for the first time in a long time.

The only thing that made me cry uncontrollably was seeing my doll house my father's mother had built for me when I was seven or eight years old. Mom had salvaged it from being stored in the attic at her parents' house. Terry didn't understand how I could get emotional over an old toy. It wasn't really about the toy. It was one of my only treasures and yet a heavy reminder of some of the only happy memories I have of my childhood, a family torn apart and yet another relationship in my life gone bad. As we drove past her house I saw the lamp lit in the window. It was a very small comfort to me for some unknown reason, I guess because I will most likely never see or talk to her again, still she is there. She is there but my grandfather has died in the time since my last drive by. I felt a little more empty knowing that. I could feel the emptiness in the house just by looking up at the windows. For me driving past the houses of estranged family members is a bit like visiting graves. I don't know why I feel the need to do it as there is nothing in the experience for me to connect with but it is a small comfort. Like little by little I make progress at peace. At least I keep trying to convince myself of that.

We sped past several of my mother's families houses trying to remain anonymous while we literally strolled down memory lane on the way to pop in at mom's. It was a weird feeling too. Different though. There is much more disgust and anger there. I no longer feel guilty about it though. Though sad, it is just the way it is. I am not to blame, even if no one can ever know that. I just pray that when I am old and my children have made their own lives that they don't have the same feelings for me that I have for the people I came from. What worries me most is that they will resent me because they have no history with my family because of all of this and there is no way for me to make up for or change that. They won't understand, and I can't explain.

Whenever I get to feel this way,
try to find new words to say,
I think about the bad old days
we used to know.

Nights of winter turn me cold—fears of dying, getting old.
We ran the race and the race was won
by running slowly.

Could be soon we’ll cease to sound,
slowly upstairs, faster down.
Then to revisit stony grounds,
we used to know.

We Used To Know- Jethro Tull

Thankfully, there was just as many good experiences to think about though. I am tired now. I will write about the bright side of the whole experience tomorrow.

Posted by gwendolyn on November 29, 2003 at 11:01 PM