You know how some people see an object like, I dunno, a book or a sock or a scarf or something and it brings back all these memories and they have all these stories to tell, all because they looked down and happened to see this one thing sitting all by its lonesome in a corner, forgotten? There's this sweeping motion that takes hold of your mind as the memory comes washing back in like a new tide on a cold beach and everything gets to be a different color and you remember maybe half a minute of who you used to be half a decade ago. You sit differently in your skin, your ears ring with different songs and your eyes cast around, maybe for an apparition of memories past or maybe just to remember remember remember what they used to see, how they used to see it.
Roads do that for me. Roads, and places I used to pass every day on a regular journey. Going down to South Campus, passing the bell tower, Kenan stadium, Ram's Head, Morrison, SASB, all the way down to the intersection where you can see the Dean Dome at the bottom of the hill makes me think of freshman year and jogs so many memories of early morning walks to chem, early morning runs back to my dorm to grab my shako before games, countless dinner and lunch plans before and between classes. Cutting back by the arboretum to get to the planetarium reminds me of early mornings junior year and walking across the upper quad reminds me of the summer before.
There are a couple of routes that I haven't been down in literally years simply because I haven't needed them. Like the back of the parking lot at the elementary school where the buses used to drive out every afternoon? I can't even think of what that would bring to mind. Or the parking lot behind the middle school? Or the walk between the band room and the auditorium? The practice rooms at South, and the band hallway with the lockers? The road back to the aquatic center? These are all places that I haven't seen in a long time, but even as I think about it, I can tie bits of my life back together.
There's a couple of roads in Hickory I used to take all the time to go to ballet. I'd be running from choir or practice or something and I'd definitely not speed at all down one way streets that I knew like the back of my hand, only because I'd been driven down them so many times. I used a couple today to get to Frye Hospital where my grandfather's been in CCU after a heart attack this morning. Even as I worried on my way back from the hospital to my house, my memories took me back to summer evenings with the windows down and radio up, driving with my dancer's tights rolled up showing off my taped ankles so I could drive barefoot back to Granite Falls. I followed familiar bends and thought of the things that'd changed and the things that'd stayed the same and could never decide if there were enough of either.
You know, there's supposed to be something mythical that ties you to Carolina, like the love you can have for a place is solid, something that could fall from your hands or tie them when you try to leave forever. I think there's something like that that ties me to my mountains too, and to the places I've watched them from. And even though I've spent most of my life trying to get away from here, I'm still bound because this place is where my family is and where my past sits. I've been so frustrated at the hundred and fifty miles on I-40 that have stopped me from being here when I've just wanted to be home. I'm tired of being written out of plans because I'm so far away. This car, this wonderful object that I hope will carry me to wonderful places, brought me back today and it was so beautiful to be home.
Because my family's pain is my pain. And I'm tired of carrying it on my own at a distance.
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