You CAN Go Home Again...
I figure a happy-strange post about being back is long-overdue.
Dayton seems to have become a weird mixture of everything's-the-same and everything's-completely-freaking-different.
I'm taking my usual afternoon stroll when Rosie whizzes by me on a bike. Rosie, the baby whom I once took for a walk in a stroller, who once merely burbled contentedly at me, now a skinny-limbed, round-faced child who can not only talk but says "excuse me!" as she almost runs me over. She is followed by her younger brother, now himself a walking, talking child (who is encouraging unhealthy chicken-playing habits in his younger sister; let's hope she doesn't maintain them when she graduates to a car). They ride their bicycles up and down the street in a frenzied loop: pedaling up the hill furiously, sailing down and shrieking with glee. And I remember when I was their age, perhaps a little older, doing the very same thing down the very same hill.
Yes, if you squint and ignore the newer occupants, my neighborhood looks exactly the same as it did fifteen years ago: those same cool treelined streets, the same tittering of birds, the same smoke smell of somebody having a barbecue, the houses built long enough ago that they actually look different from one another. Yes, good old Davis Road has its share of skeletons in the closet, but it looks so idyllic that it's hard to care as you stroll down to the park and swing on the swings that are still too high for you to ease into easily (then again, you ARE only five four...), watching the Wee Elks have little league practice in that same field, in those same little uniforms that they've worn every year of your life.
And then one ventures out into an ever-encroaching sprawl of development: the smallish Borders I frequented whenever I felt like "alone time" relocated to a massive new building, the myriad additions to the mall in hopes of keeping up when the brand-new mall opens up in July. Everywhere it's like this: the old and somewhat timeless coexisting with ever-changing development: stores that have gone out of business, stores that have been newly built, more and more STUFF everywhere. Rather like a person, it seems my hometown is growing up.
I will occasionally run into a familiar face, such as Megan Welton-Smith (aka the OTHER Token Liberal at my high school), now working at the Seattle's Best in the middle of the brand-new ginormous Borders, who will strike up some conversation that usually involves what they've been up to and at least one "Oh, you've lost weight!" But the familiar faces are getting rarer.
Yes, folks, Dayton is feeling more and more like my childhood hometown and less and less like where I actually live. I love coming back to stay a few months, to reconnect with my roots (and remember how to drive defensively), but the oddness is still present. Less weird than last summer, perhaps, but I'm not used to having two "homes" yet.
Still, it's been nice to hit up all my old haunts again. I'm hoping to get a job with the Race, and try to catch up with the people who are actually staying in town for the summer. (Speaking of which, Mari, Jess? Let's hit Fairfield. I want more of that insanely rich, insanely horrible-for-you popcorn.) This "home" is becoming a comfortable blanket I slip on, even as it's less and less where I hang my hat.
Besides, as much as I love it? The West Coast still can't manage a decent thunderstorm ~_^
Dayton seems to have become a weird mixture of everything's-the-same and everything's-completely-freaking-different.
I'm taking my usual afternoon stroll when Rosie whizzes by me on a bike. Rosie, the baby whom I once took for a walk in a stroller, who once merely burbled contentedly at me, now a skinny-limbed, round-faced child who can not only talk but says "excuse me!" as she almost runs me over. She is followed by her younger brother, now himself a walking, talking child (who is encouraging unhealthy chicken-playing habits in his younger sister; let's hope she doesn't maintain them when she graduates to a car). They ride their bicycles up and down the street in a frenzied loop: pedaling up the hill furiously, sailing down and shrieking with glee. And I remember when I was their age, perhaps a little older, doing the very same thing down the very same hill.
Yes, if you squint and ignore the newer occupants, my neighborhood looks exactly the same as it did fifteen years ago: those same cool treelined streets, the same tittering of birds, the same smoke smell of somebody having a barbecue, the houses built long enough ago that they actually look different from one another. Yes, good old Davis Road has its share of skeletons in the closet, but it looks so idyllic that it's hard to care as you stroll down to the park and swing on the swings that are still too high for you to ease into easily (then again, you ARE only five four...), watching the Wee Elks have little league practice in that same field, in those same little uniforms that they've worn every year of your life.
And then one ventures out into an ever-encroaching sprawl of development: the smallish Borders I frequented whenever I felt like "alone time" relocated to a massive new building, the myriad additions to the mall in hopes of keeping up when the brand-new mall opens up in July. Everywhere it's like this: the old and somewhat timeless coexisting with ever-changing development: stores that have gone out of business, stores that have been newly built, more and more STUFF everywhere. Rather like a person, it seems my hometown is growing up.
I will occasionally run into a familiar face, such as Megan Welton-Smith (aka the OTHER Token Liberal at my high school), now working at the Seattle's Best in the middle of the brand-new ginormous Borders, who will strike up some conversation that usually involves what they've been up to and at least one "Oh, you've lost weight!" But the familiar faces are getting rarer.
Yes, folks, Dayton is feeling more and more like my childhood hometown and less and less like where I actually live. I love coming back to stay a few months, to reconnect with my roots (and remember how to drive defensively), but the oddness is still present. Less weird than last summer, perhaps, but I'm not used to having two "homes" yet.
Still, it's been nice to hit up all my old haunts again. I'm hoping to get a job with the Race, and try to catch up with the people who are actually staying in town for the summer. (Speaking of which, Mari, Jess? Let's hit Fairfield. I want more of that insanely rich, insanely horrible-for-you popcorn.) This "home" is becoming a comfortable blanket I slip on, even as it's less and less where I hang my hat.
Besides, as much as I love it? The West Coast still can't manage a decent thunderstorm ~_^