MEMORY LANES

I have such feelings about this town where Ken and I went to college.

The 2 hour drive up felt quick.  Ken and I listening to Ken’s ‘get-hyped’ playlist, and Sloane in the back, steadily working through her bag of diced apples. She was all business about those apples.

Because it was so long ago, it almost feels now as though I dreamed up the time that we spent there.  It is as if I don’t actually believe it exists in reality. So as we drive up those gorgeous mountains and into the town,  it’s startling to realize that it’s real and keeps on existing even while we are away from it.  I guess I feel a smidge this way about all the places that I have lived, but college most especially because it was such a set apart space – both in location and for the significance in my life.

It’s a sweet ache, but I also have pangs of regret about this time, too. Calm down, I think everything happened for a real good reason but I’m asserting the right to say I wish I had done certain things differently.  As I drove around that day, I kept thinking about the kind of person that I was, thinking about how much I was struggling to find myself then. How much I was trying to find true peace.

I had plans that were going to involve taking a walk through downtown but I lasted about 5 minutes at the farmer’s market. It was cold and windy and even the prospect of cinnamon rolls wasn’t going to be enough to keep me outside. Sloane’s face was bright red with cold and so we scuttled indoors to the nearest Target to pick up some things for the day. We also tried on shoes; Sloane pointed to all the ones that she wanted to try on and we had ourselves a ball.

We were there for a volleyball tournament and Ken was abuzz with energy all morning on the drive up. I’ve said this before, right? How I love the way he loves things? When he loves something, he lays it all out there, which makes it great fun to watch him do things like play volleyball. He’s good at it and he constantly wants to get better.  I’ve watched a lot of volleyball in these past few years, A LOT, and from that experience I know that he is the kind of player that is really fun to watch. He works hard and plays smart.  I’m not just saying that because I’m married to him, although that may have something with the pride I feel well up when I see him play his heart out.

We ended the day with a late dinner at one of our favorite places to eat, A&T’s, where my love of Peruvian chicken first began. A friend met us there and we were all exhausted after a day filled with volleyball, basketball, driving and toddler-wrangling, but we enjoyed the heck out of that food, Sloane included. The drive back home was painful, but we made it.

Way too early the next morning, Sloane got me up and we headed downstairs to see what the day had in store for us. I started in on the dishes and Sloane went to go see about the books in the bookshelf. When I turned around, I saw that she had picked out “Mrs. Dalloway” and was sitting at her table with it, fully engaged in its pages. She spent some time picking out the letters of the alphabet she recognized and then proceeded to flip through and ‘read’ aloud from the book, with earnest and passionate tones. According to Sloane, the story went something like, “koba shona aka jahb…” 

I am ever so conscious that I'm walking down this particular lane of life right now with my quickly growing daughter and that all this will become the faintest of memories all too soon, and I am already wracked with the sweetness and the ache of a fleeting time. So this upcoming week, it's not just a week to get through, I'm paving a lane and I'm hoping it goes slowly so that I have time to create all the grooves and dips that I will revisit in my mind years down the road.