22. Hiraeth
884 words. Approximately 4 minutes, 25 seconds. Audio version here.
My memories are being stolen from me, in the name of progress, and-if I’m being completely honest with you-it’s quite disconcerting when I really think about what that means.
My sister and I swap hosting Thanksgiving and Christmas each year, so at least once per year on one of the two major winter holidays, I get to visit my sister and brother-in-law, and, by extension, my old hometown. It wasn’t my original hometown, but it is the town in which I came of age, so it’s really hard to think of the area where I spent the first nine years of my life with the same sort of longing that I think of the area where I spent the next nine.
It’s nice that my sister stayed in that town; I have an excuse to go back to a place that I always thought I hated, but have come to realize I truly love. Mostly for the place itself, with rolling hills covered in a healthy mix of deciduous and pine trees, whose appearances change over the seasons, with a sweltering summer sun cutting swathes of bright green through the area, giving way to the snow flurries of winter and the comforting chill of the dark green of the pines. It’s mystical, almost, at least much more than Florida, where our predecessors braved cutting through swamp lands to lay their claim next to nests of mosquitoes, where neither the seasons nor the palm trees change, where everything stagnates.
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My car comes to a stop at a four-way intersection of two-lane roads. There are no other cars in sight, save the one that belongs to the attendant at the quiet gas station on the corner. I make a right turn and my wheels kick up little clouds of red dust, making an impression just for a moment before the dust settles again and my presence is just a distant memory.
I like taking this way into work. It adds a good fifteen minutes to my commute, which is already nearly half an hour by the highway, but it’s so peaceful back here, and the weather is perfect. These two-lane roads are the perfect place for my head to clear and my creativity to bloom. There are no people; just the occasional cow and a small farmhouse on the side of the road before the trees take over again. These pastoral scenes resonate within me deeply, and create a special light.
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When I visit my hometown now on holidays, it’s almost like I’m in a different place. Things aren’t as I remember when I was in high school. Shops that seemed like they had been there forever are gone. Roads have been expanded to accommodate more traffic. Local restaurants have disappeared in favor of national chains. It’s pretty upsetting. This is what I mean when I say my memories are being stolen. They are literally being ripped away, paved over, and destroyed in the name of progress. And there is nothing any of us can do to stop progress.
It’s sad to me to think that my memories of this place as an idyllic wonderland are disappearing, and even if I physically return home, it won’t ever be home as I knew it. And when I die, those memories, that place, dies with me.
But then there is something uplifting to me in the thought that others will have this exact same experience, just in slightly different ways. What, I wonder, will the 16-year-olds of today lament in twenty years when the longing for this place they grew calls to them?
Will they say, “I remember when these roads were as smooth as silk, and when all of these businesses were new”? Will they reminisce about afternoons spent at the DQ the same way I reminisce about the Fridays before football games at the Dairy Mart? I guess we’ll all experience what comes with age, what comes with change. All of us will have our memories erased in some way or another.
There may be nothing to do but come to terms with it.
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The traffic light turns yellow, and I apply pressure to my brakes while the person in the car beside mine slams down on the gas. I wait for the cross-traffic to move at this large intersection between two divided highways.
There’s a shopping plaza to my left, and a large apartment complex to my right (or are those condos now? I can never remember). It makes sense for them to be here; after all, this is prime real estate right off of the highway. There’s more development on either side of the street in front of me, too, but I’m not going that way.
I make a right turn, without kicking up any dust. Everything here has changed. My memories have all been erased, and replaced with something different. The pastoral landscapes have become cityscapes. When you only visit once a year, the erasure is more noticeable; it seems to happen right before your eyes.
So I guess I have no choice now but to hold onto these memories myself, let them live on in me, and to die with me. Because that is what life is, and what is so special is understanding that change, progress, these things that erase my memories create memories for others; they give us all our own special light.