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say goodbye to where you've grown up
Apr. 13th, 2001 07:02 pmI drove my car, because it needs to be driven. I drove through the neighborhood, because it is sinking in that I will never live here again. Which is hard to deal with, considering I've lived in Austin since 1987. Same year my first grade class, the third one in the third city I'd been to, made a time capsule. I looked at that bare metal plate in the ground, under our grey sky. Laurel Mountain Elementary May 14 1987. I forgot when they said they would open it. 20 years? 50 years? 100 years? Will I be alive to be embarassed or fond of what I wrote? Because I don't remember that either.
So much has changed and stayed the same. The sidewalk down DK Ranch Road, where I rode my bike or walked so many times. Alone or with Tracy, my one true friend. That daredevil feeling of flight, riding semi-dangerously for a kid. The house with the horses is still there, but I didn't see the horse that ate a chunk off my handlegrip one afternoon. The house with gates and fancy holiday wreaths has been repainted, and the fence is gone. Next door, the underbrush is cleared and the painted shacks are gone. With their hippie flowers, mushroom clouds and peace signs, I don't know how we ever became convinced that is where the Satanists were. But we were sure Satanists were everywhere. Suburban children's paranoia.
They've added onto the elementary school, so much of the vista has changed. Little things remain. Enough memory to make it hurt. I drove around, through the streets I knew so well as a kid. Past my old house, still so much the same. I have always wanted to see if the rose bush is still in the backyard, but seeing the house full of someone else's life would be too much. After we moved out I broke a lock on my bedroom window, so we could sneak back in the next day. Stand in my empty room, look for the ghosts. Kate, Amy, Tracy, and I climbed into the attic over the garage, and accidentally brought the garage ceiling crashing down. A miracle that we weren't hurt. I don't think my parents ever found out it was us.
Tracy's house on Buckingham looks exactly the same, so much that I half expected to see Mrs. Kingsley's blue car in the driveway. The place where we played hide and seek or ghost in the graveyard in the middle of the night, or ran silently under the lamp lights when we snuck out of the house. We climbed on the unsteady roof, even though I was scared to death. I did see two young girls playing down the street, and for a moment I saw myself ten years ago. It was the oddest feeling, so unexpected. I don't know what it meant. It crushed me though, and I started to cry in the car while I turned the music up.
sometimes, I want to go back. oh god, do I want to go back, do it over, start over, a second chance, please god, please I want to fix what went wrong so many times over, I want to make it better, I want it to change
No matter how many times I tell myself to stop it, not to ask for that, I do it anyway.
I drove because I think I may never do it again, because even though I'm only moving across town it feels like I'm moving light years away. Because I will never be this young again and because I'm so scared of dying, because I have to see it once more to say goodbye. Because I can't define exactly what I'm feeling, it all goes by so fast now. Because nothing will be the same again, and everything I had is scattered. Because all I want to be is that child, because that was the happiest part of my life.
So much has changed and stayed the same. The sidewalk down DK Ranch Road, where I rode my bike or walked so many times. Alone or with Tracy, my one true friend. That daredevil feeling of flight, riding semi-dangerously for a kid. The house with the horses is still there, but I didn't see the horse that ate a chunk off my handlegrip one afternoon. The house with gates and fancy holiday wreaths has been repainted, and the fence is gone. Next door, the underbrush is cleared and the painted shacks are gone. With their hippie flowers, mushroom clouds and peace signs, I don't know how we ever became convinced that is where the Satanists were. But we were sure Satanists were everywhere. Suburban children's paranoia.
They've added onto the elementary school, so much of the vista has changed. Little things remain. Enough memory to make it hurt. I drove around, through the streets I knew so well as a kid. Past my old house, still so much the same. I have always wanted to see if the rose bush is still in the backyard, but seeing the house full of someone else's life would be too much. After we moved out I broke a lock on my bedroom window, so we could sneak back in the next day. Stand in my empty room, look for the ghosts. Kate, Amy, Tracy, and I climbed into the attic over the garage, and accidentally brought the garage ceiling crashing down. A miracle that we weren't hurt. I don't think my parents ever found out it was us.
Tracy's house on Buckingham looks exactly the same, so much that I half expected to see Mrs. Kingsley's blue car in the driveway. The place where we played hide and seek or ghost in the graveyard in the middle of the night, or ran silently under the lamp lights when we snuck out of the house. We climbed on the unsteady roof, even though I was scared to death. I did see two young girls playing down the street, and for a moment I saw myself ten years ago. It was the oddest feeling, so unexpected. I don't know what it meant. It crushed me though, and I started to cry in the car while I turned the music up.
sometimes, I want to go back. oh god, do I want to go back, do it over, start over, a second chance, please god, please I want to fix what went wrong so many times over, I want to make it better, I want it to change
No matter how many times I tell myself to stop it, not to ask for that, I do it anyway.
I drove because I think I may never do it again, because even though I'm only moving across town it feels like I'm moving light years away. Because I will never be this young again and because I'm so scared of dying, because I have to see it once more to say goodbye. Because I can't define exactly what I'm feeling, it all goes by so fast now. Because nothing will be the same again, and everything I had is scattered. Because all I want to be is that child, because that was the happiest part of my life.