at home
Coming home at holidays feels a bit to me like stalking the ghosts of my past. I lived in this town for eighteen years, if you count the tiny town across the bay as being part of this one. I grew up with the salt air and humidity curling waves into my hair -- it wasn't until college that I learned that I actually have straight hair.
I always feel a bit tense when I leave the house in this town, nervous that I'll run into someone who knew me back when. I seldom do.
Eight years ago, I was a senior in high school, eagerly anticipating college life and getting the hell out of this town. I hardly know the girl I was then. If I unfold my life like an accordian, it looks like this:
Today: I'm 26 years old, and blessedly single. I have my masters degree and a good job. I live in a little house by the creek.
Eight years ago: I was 18, dating the ex. I was a senior in high school, and I had my whole future sort of fancifully laid out before me.
Eight years before: I was 10, astonished at the idea that I had lived long enough to earn two digits in my age. I was in the fourth grade and generally hated school.
Eight years before: I was 2. I don't remember much of that time, but I lived in Ingleside, a tiny little town filled mostly with military personnel. My parents owned a little house there, and I had a little room of my own. My room was painted yellow, and there was linoleum tile on the floors. I made "joinks".
Eight years before that, my parents were married. They were only nineteen.
It's strange to look at my life in intervals of eight, and the number seems terribly arbitrary. Is it bad journalism to leave out seven years that indelibly shaped my life at each turn? The point, I suppose, is that eight years is an interminably long time, and yet it flies by so fast that, if you blink, you just might miss it.
It's been so long that the ghosts of my past have almost abandoned the place of my childhood -- almost, not completely. The house my mother lives in now isn't the house I grew up in; it's my great-grandmother's house, though it's taken on my mother's personality. It's seldom that I see something that reminds me of my great-grandmother in this house. It's casual and well-worn, though the yellow shag carpets of my G'ma's time have been (thankfully) removed. She died over five years ago -- one of the events missed by my accordian of years. But every once in a while, I'll open a closet and be unexpectedly consumed by the musty scent that I associate with my great-grandmother. Or I'll drive by my high school and remember the years I spent there, or I'll walk along the water and fall in love again with the salt breeze and the sound of the wind whipping through the palm trees.
That's when the ghosts of my past catch me at last.
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Rachel, it was incredible knowing you "back when." I was thinking last night that it's actually scary to me that I barely know you now. Going back to your look back at your life in years of 8, it reminds me that 8 years ago I was also a senior in high school, also with my life plans "fancifully laid out for me," and was already in love with the person I'm now marrying, and best friends with someone that I then believed would have some huge impact on the world I would grow old in. That's really frightening. I don't think that we had any idea then that our lives would have ended up even close to the way we currently live. I certainly never pictured myself falling in love with rural Texas and living in a house that I only dreamed about as a child. And I certainly never believed that one could be happy with what they do daily in order to pay the bills. Thanks for giving me something to think about today.
I would be scared shitless wandering the ghost town of Corpus. What a different life that was. I bet 95% or more of our HS classes are still there hating their existance. Not long before I left the state, I was running some errand and saw a guy I was somewhat chummy with in HS working some unhappy hell-job like answering phones. He was dressed all sharp and trying to do his best. His life is already over. It is too hot for that shit!
I have no need to worry about the ghosts of the past, the ghosts of the present are scary enough. I think I just ate some bad hot dogs - and the dog got one too - and I am almost certain we are both hallucinating.
Since when did I have a dog?
Corpus a ghost town....itfeels that way to me when I go back to visit these days. Something is horribly cold and empty about the place. My only ties to that tiny town are my two parents, and for some strange reason, that's not enough to make me wish to go back there.
I think about the ghosts of my past a lot. I don't have much good to say about them, unfortunately. I have recollections of meanness, and sarcasm, and this staggering pressure to conform to some mold that a bunch of preps deemed cool. I think I'd be quite a different person now if none of that had ever existed.
I do remember some good times, shared with those who I believed both then and now were good people. Rachel gave my childhood a heaven of sorts. I don't remember all the faces of the past, but I will always remember that she was nice. Few people were back then.
It's amazing how much has changed. Seeing your name here, Spleen, brought back a flood of senior year memories. I agree with your comment-the times I have been back, I've unfortunately been witness to a number of my former peers working in unideal jobs where they are desperately trying to provide for their all-too-soon families. It's nice to be past that right now. Teaching fo rme has been an amazing cure to anything that previously ailed me. I've become a natural at this, it seems, with wonderful kids who seem to strangely think I hung the moon. And I can pride myself on creating an environment for the "geek squad" that never existed for me-one of safety. Maybe that's what led me to do this for the rest of my life.
Or was it a strange craving for school cafeteria fare? Mmmm....soy burgers......
I know what you mean (about Corpus AND about going home)...
One day soon, we shall talk about Corpus, and my year of hell there.
Contrary to popular belief (some of which I have nurtured by calling it my hometown) I am NOT a New Braunfels native. I grew up three tax brackets to the north of Houston. My parents also thought it sucked there, so they moved here to New Braunfels about a year after I did. I have no ties to my past; no reason to go back. And it feels good.