Memory Lane

We are in Oregon. Home again with my kids and my parents and my house and my memories. Jeff is in Utah working. And after 12  hours in the car, driving up to my house seemed so nice. So nice that I left all the kids in that house and changed into my running clothes. I ran down the street and off to my elementary school. Past Rhonda's house. Rhonda whose parents weren't as nice as they should have been and made her have sad eyes. Then past Suzie's house. The old picnic table still on the front lawn, painted a bright green. Then along the wooded path to Bethany elementary. T-ball games surrounded me on both sides, the chink of metal bats, the cheers of eager parents. The same field where I broke my ankle at soccer practice in sixth grade. The same field where I won the 50 yard dash at field day. The playground where I jumped off swings and played hot lava monster and tetherball. I ran past the school, peeking in the windows, filled with memories of spelling tests and valentines parties and multiplication tables. It smelled like my childhood, like rain and grass and play.

I ran across the street, past Kate's house. The house where I spent days listening to Michael Jackson and playing with cabbage patch kids and eating whole wheat sandwiches and skim milk. It's funny the things you remember when you're not trying to. I kept going, to the park, past the tennis courts, past the house where my grade school crush lived. And then down the road, filled with rhododendruns, all shades of pink and purple. Up to Jill's cul-de-sac. Jill with her thick goggly glasses and short sandy hair. And Mary Louise's house across the street. She was my mom's best friend. It was a house where we spent hours. Playing in the backyard with Clinton and Melissa, folding socks in the living room. The same cul-de-sac where I pulled my brother in circles in a red wagon, his little blonde head bobbing.

I turned around then, heading back home. And there it was, a bus parked on the side of the road, right where it would have been over 30 years ago. A bus, parked there at 7:30 in the evening. I can't think why. But 30 years ago, it would have pulled up to that corner at 7:30 in the morning. My brother and I would have been standing on the corner, waiting to be whisked off to vacation bible school, barely older than toddlers. My mom waited in the car, a little brown VW rabbit. I held my brothers hand tight, his little body shaking with the tears he couldn't hold back. That bus was supposed to help us spread our wings and my brother wasn't ready. So I was ready for both of us. I was good that way when I needed to be.

So I kept going, a little faster now. Past Andrew's house. Then my best friend Kim. Sleepovers and matching shoes and Jan's warm smile. So many memories, flooding over me. I recorded them as I ran, wrote them in my mind so I wouldn't forget. Wouldn't forget my childhood and the people I knew and the person I was when I was with them. Those are important memories. Ones I had forgotten. And sometimes it's good to remember.