Things are different now

Driving back home to my parents', I am surprised to find myself imagining that I'm driving with someone, say a new love who has yet to know to me deeply, as I give him a tour of sorts through the town which began my story.

Coming into the south end of town, there's the high school, remodeled but looking so much the same as I remember.  Six years of memories there...hours spent with pianos, guitars, and voice in practice rooms; the softball field where I broke my arm; the football field where I practiced with my cheerleading squad; the woods where I was fascinated by lichen, flowers, and trees in biology class.  Conversely, bane of my existence, where I was tortured for six years for being overweight.

Across the street is the hockey arena.  I never played but spent a TON of hours there as the daughter of a hockey coach.  Having so recently finished up physical therapy, I look for the warming house where the hockey team carried me after I dislocated my knee.  Ah, yes.  Still there.

Just down the street from there is the church where I was baptized, confirmed, and married.  Two blocks away is the church I started to attend as my marriage unraveled. 

Once I reach the stoplight, the one that used to be a four-way until I was a teen, I see the credit union that used to be a Hardees; what a big deal that was when it arrived.  To the right - the technical college where I first got my CPR certificate at 12, and my EMT license at 17.

Next up is the building that used to house the pharmacy/gift shop where I worked through high school.  I always wanted to be a pharmacist.  It's another church now.  It makes me remember the day in 1994 I came home from work, having taken the only car as Dad worked in Brainerd during the week, to find a driveway full of squads after my sister had been kidnapped.

The blinking four-way stop is still as it was all my life, although the Family Pathways of today used to be the Outdoorsman, which used to be the SuperValu.  There's a SuperWalmart out by the freeway now, by our town's fourth stoplight.  We're movin' up in the world!

I pass the elementary school, which houses the auditorium I first sang in.  Eight years old.  I still remember standing there, seeing my parents sitting in the audience with their little portable cassette recorder.  I can still tell you what I was wearing.  It's 2011 now but I can still sing all the words to that song from 1985.  I remember standing there ten years later, about to leave for the big, bad Cities on a full music scholarship, performing Mozart's Laudate Dominum as a farewell.  I got a standing ovation that night; my dad cried.  I was part of the cast of The Music Man and Little Shop of Horrors on that stage as well.

*sigh*

I pass the fire hall where the firemen's kids and I used to sneak in to get cheap pop (Never the beer.  Oh, never.)  My old ambulance garage is just behind there, and the jail where we used to file our run sheets and time cards.  There's the gas station where we used to steal cigarettes, and the bank where I got my first car loan for $1200.  $117.04/mo for a whole year; man, that was a lot of money for a college kid who had to catch a ride home to work at the nursing home for $6/hr every weekend.

I didn't make it by there: the nursing home.  Believe it or not, I get there enough on occasion - only I'm driving a big, white, flashy taxi these days, not my precious old 1986 Cavalier with the windshield that leaked rain all over my seat. Best car ever. You could fit two of my friends from Augsburg and one from the U in that car; their euphonium, trumpet, and my guitar, plus our duffels, would actually fit into the trunk. Although maybe not legally...

I look to the right as I cross the river and remember sneaking across the railroad trellis at night.  My God, what were we thinking?!  I think that was also the year that the grandstand burned down at the fairgrounds.  I'm not sure.  It's been nearly half my life ago.

Now I'm into my neighborhood: Woodpecker Ridge East.  I can tell you who used to live in every single one of these houses, although I probably couldn't tell you anymore.  The park where as kids we used to picnic with Mom. So many houses where I used to babysit, especially that summer that I saved all my money, a whole $186, for contact lenses.  I managed to save another $200 that summer for my class ring and letterman's coat. These are the roads I rode on, played on, snuck out on, streaked down during a game of Truth or Dare.  This is where I walked for eighteen months as I lost my weight the first time. 

I went for a four-mile run through my neighborhood today.  Most of the people who drove past me were strangers, but everyone waved at me anyway.  I'm quite sure nobody recognized me as little Mandi Laugerman - let's be real, I look nothing like people would remember me.  The street on which I ran to reach the county highway used to be "the motorcycle trail," a narrow dirt ATV trail through the woods.  My neighbor Danny was killed on it in 1993.  In fact, this whole development used to be our playground, full of tree forts, paths, reeds, and hidden ponds.  All private property now, and the road is already being torn up to put in new curbs.

As I run out into the country, I notice the shooting range is gone.  I first fired a gun there.  The airport is now what I'm pretty sure is the highway department.  There are a whole lot more houses out here now, and much fewer trees (Dang. I was looking forward to the shade).  In my memory this is a quiet and narrow country road.  It's a widened and much busier boulevard now.

Everything about today is so familiar yet strangely new.  I'm not a teenager anymore.  I'm a 33 year old who is running...yes, running...in a body, in a time, and down roads that I no longer recognize.  I wonder where my life has gone, what it has meant.  I wonder about memories and how near they can be.  How real are they?  How do we cope with and make sense of them today, out of all that has happened in between these times?  I don't quite know how to feel.

I pause my thoughts when I hear a vehicle slowing down behind me, followed by a yell and a bark.  Dad has loaded my dog into his truck and they are pacing me, driving ahead little bits at a time and pausing to wait and cheer for me.  It is hot and humid here by the swamp, but I pick up the pace.  I smile again.