the streets of long ago

On a chilly midwestern day, I sit on a bench in my old home town and remember. It is a special treat to be here with my younger sister. We haven't been in this place together since the day we moved away, so many years ago--or was it yesterday--back when we were bubbly teenagers. We park the car and walk. Walk the half block from our house--the house our dad built--to school, except our grade school has morphed into two large homes.

Then we walk to church--a full block--and remember walking our dad home from his church office for lunch. The block seems strangely shorter than we remember. We walk around the block--it happens to be just two days after Halloween, which is a time we remember so much about our neighborhood. Those nights ... tearing up and down the streets with our pillow cases slung over our shoulders, filled with huge (weren't they? or were we just small) candybars and bubblegum. We remember which houses gave the best stuff, where we babysat, where our school friends had lived. Some houses seem totally unchanged by the years, others have been torn down and replaced by huge homes squished on too-small lots. Viewing our charming small town--a bedroom community to Chicago--as adults, we are impressed with what a wonderful place it was to grow up.

Then we walk uptown and have a treat from the bakery which is totally unchanged from when we were kids. We stand on the street trying to figure out which shop had been our beloved "dime store" when a woman stops and points to it. "That's where it was, and that's where Schluter Drug was--remember?" She too had moved away but moved back years later, and was eager to talk about the town we love and how it was when we were kids. We try to figure out if we had been in high school together and I finally ask her how old she is.

We are in town for the 100th anniversary of the church where we grew up, where our dad was the minister for 20 years. It is an amazing experience to see our childhood friends, now looking like older (yes much older) versions of their parents––as we remember their parents. Once again we find ourselves asking each others' ages, trying to figure out how things were when we were kids. For when you are young, age difference is big. So like the friendly woman uptown on the street, we laugh as we realize only at such an event would you ask someone's age or the year they were born.

My older sister lives near there and joins us at the event. An old friend of hers comes up to her and asks, "Weren't we friends? Like really good friends?" My sister agrees, digging deep for the memory. Such funny conversations take place as we gather up and make sense of old memories.

So for a few brief hours, childhood friends and places we remember as clearly as if it were today, become very real again. It is an amazing experience, sort of in the "top ten" of life events. But then, like the Cinderella story, it is time to go back to real life, but going back blessed with new memories of the old memories. It's kind of complex as I process it all. But I'm very grateful for the bringing forth of the old, as a reminder of people, a time of life and a place, that had much to do with making me the person I am today. Yes, that sums it up the best. I came away very grateful.