Blog prompt Friday: Have you gone back to visit the neighborhood you grew up in? If so, describe what you found.
I hardly recognize my old neighborhood. Actually it's my new old neighborhood. A few years ago, I moved back into the neighborhood I grew up in and it was immediately obvious that things weren't the same.
The little drug store on the corner that I used to buy baseball cards in is now an office for a construction company. The playground that I played many baseball games on—and experienced my first kiss on—is no longer a playground. Instead, five houses sit on that lot. The grade school I attended has been turned into apartments. The barber shop I frequented as a kid has been closed. I'm not sure if Ray the Barber died or if he just decided to retire. Gang graffiti is now prominent on buildings and under bridges. No, this isn't the same neighborhood I grew up in.
One by one these changes occurred—none of them seeming to be connected—just many individuals making separate decisions. But ultimately they are all connected, at least for those of who us remember what the neighborhood used to be like. Neighborhoods change with time—just like nearly everything else. But the older I get the more I want people to at least acknowledge how things used to be. Not because things were better then, but because those things are part of who I am.
If people forget the name of the little drug store—turned construction company on the corner, then somehow it feels like they are denying that I ever spent many allowances there. If people don't even know that the neighborhood kids played baseball games on the lot where five houses now sit, then it feels like people are saying those games were never played. If people who are living in the apartments where I used to attend grade school don't even realize it was a school, it's like they are saying…well, you get the idea.
The exception to all of this is my first kiss. No matter how much the neighborhood changes, nothing can ever invade or even come close to stealing that memory away. I guess because I guard it so closely. And maybe therein lies the answer to this dilemma, if you can really call it that. Maybe I'm supposed to guard these other memories in some fashion, like maybe writing them down in full detail, so that I can point to something tangible that won't change.
