Belleville

On Memorial Day weekend, I visited Stephen, Megan, Aida, and my Dad in Burnham. I had such a good time playing with Aida (nearing four years!) and her two friends, Braden and Cameron. I just loved rough-housing with them and pretending to be fish! On Monday Stephen, Meg, Aida and I spent the day in Boalsburg, the "birthplace of Memorial Day." They have lots of events and a carnival and vendors galore for Memorial Day--in all of the U.S., it was the place to be! My Dad couldn't join us because he wasn't feeling well, but we got to hang out together in Stephen's garden next to the creek below their house (prepositional overload!: out, in, next to, below). We didn't talk about anything new. My Dad likes to talk about guns, my brother likes to humor my Dad, Aida takes her mother's attention. I looked at the sunset as it shone golden and splendid through the trees just above us. Then the gold melted through the lowest-hanging branches into the dark trees lining a meadow across the creek. Creeks gurgle. They really do.

Driving out of Burnham an hour later, I decided to follow through with the plan inside my head since the night before: I would visit Belleville before turning home to Lancaster. Belleville is where I lived with Stephen and my Mom from ages one to six. I still remember the outline of the little town, although it's been over ten years since I last saw the place.

I wish I could better describe the reasons I had for visiting Belleville. I wanted to see Belleville with that self-conscious desire we all have to reread our favorite book as a kid: will it still be funny? will it still make me cry? will I still worry about the dog finding its real mother? I guess I wanted to check to make sure that there was indeed a reality at the center of the memories I retain of my first few years of life. I have a surprising number of memories for a child under the age of seven. I'm told we don't remember our experiences much before age seven. But I do! Sometimes I remember whole conversations. Off track.

I parked at Union Elementary and got out. I turned toward the school and to the area near a tree that the first grade girls used as stables for their My Little Ponies [TM]. I remembered a moment from first grade when I had brought my ponies to school to play with these girls. I came over with my tattered ponies, and asked to play with them. They refused, "No. You can't come play." I don't remember my reaction exactly, but I think it was shame and anger. I may have told them I would make them play with me. But instead I took my ponies and my heavy heart to the playground. Looking back at six-year-old me was strange. That hesitation and insecurity is not gone entirely, but what do I have at age 20 that I didn't have then? The ability to forgive those girls. So I did that, and committed to keep on doing that as I continued my walk through the past.

I went down the little hill of the school toward the lane leading to the Orchard Apartments. There was a stable (a real one) at the corner where I had always been so thrilled to see the head of an old gray horse protruding from a small window on the corner of the building. I walked around the building in the twilight, searching with a sense of eeriness for a phantom horse to pop his head out of one of the windows on the side of the stable. As I turned the corner, I gave a jump! A tall chestnut horse leaned her long head out of the window, nostrils at my eye level. It was the same jump as 14 years ago! She even consented to letting me rub her head as she licked my open palm, wondering where the food was.

I walked around little Belleville in the dusk, seeing only one other person the whole time. The town seemed to be deserted at only 8:30 in the evening. I headed back to my car as I noticed the baseball fields past the school. I headed up the footpath and watched the mountain pull down the very last remnants of color from the sky. But the only song I could think of was about a lakeshore, not mountains. So I sang it anyway, and headed to the car, and to 322 Eastbound, and to Lancaster, and my feather comforter, and statistics homework.

I've been working on this thought for a while now, and it's so simple. Life is building. Each day adds another brick to the structure, and only repetition will create something, good or bad. But how quickly we find ourselves in a whole other wing of the building that is ourselves! There's an uncontrollable continuity of the bricks: each day is 24 hours. And sometimes it seems as though whole months are exactly the same, one after another. But we are moving very quickly, I feel. Even if the scenery looks the same for a while. This may not make sense yet, due to the conflicting metaphors that I have tried unsuccessfully to avoid. But I may revisit this "aloud" in the future. In the words of my stats teacher, "this is just something I love to think about!"