I woke up at 6:30 this morning rolled over and looked out the window. The woods were clouded in deep mist…the robins everywhere, pulling worms out of the wet grass. (How eagerly I would wait every spring for the first robin…the sign that summer was on the way!) Every once in a while a leaf would slowly drift by the window….It was so still…except for muffled bird cries echoing through the woods.
I waited and watched for almost an hour, till I couldn’t stand it any longer! I jumped up and threw on my clothes…grabbed a camera and ran. The world was turned into a different place by the fog…The mist would swirl and show me an image and the next minute it would be gone. I walked on and on and on. The squirrels would scold me and then go back to chasing each other up and down the trees. I reached the lake and started around it….the ducks would swim out of the mist and then disappear into it again. When I reached the broad, slow, muddy Walhonding River, I stopped and leaned on the bridge rail and watched it flow beneath my feet. My great-great grandfather drowned in this river….I wonder about the details lost in time. Was it in a flood….was he driving a wagon across? My roots…..my heritage is bound up in this place. I walked down to the bank and picked up a smooth rock…a piece of ‘home’ to carry away with me.
When I got back …. one tired pup! …. Rick and I took off for Roscoe Village. It’s a part of Coshocton that used to be a canal landing on the Ohio and Erie Canal System. It’s now a living history village …. filled with costumed people of the period. We photographed for quite a while and then walked to a bakery and rewarded ourselves for all our efforts!
Rick took me back to my old neighborhood and left me there alone to wander for an hour or so. I walked and remembered. I retraced my steps to my old elementary school. The stone wall that I once ran my fingers along.. I now had to reach down to touch.
I couldn’t figure out where my ‘best friend’ Linda’s house had gone until I walked down the alley and found it from the rear…they had made extensive changes to the front of the house.
The sidewalks have the same old frost heaves that I used to “fly” over in my bike. They were repaving South Lawn, the street over one from seventh, where I lived, and *three* layers down were the bricks that covered the street when I was a child…I felt as if I’d been given a chance to ‘see’ them once again. At the old home place, (My grandfather built it in 1912 and my father was raised there, as was I). I could ‘see’ once again my sister Beth, who was born when I was 12, holding on to the rail of the back steps and inching her way down them. She’s wearing a light brown coat, lined in pink silk, that mom made for her. And I stood beside the lilac bush that I used to hide under as a child. It’s a strange feeling to have all these pictures superimposed over one another. Like two dimensions that drift in and out. I found out a good thing…no matter what the reality is….it can’t destroy the memory! If anything the feeling intensifies. One thing hasn’t changed. The people in small towns speak to you! I said “Good Morning” more times today then in the last year. They even call out from the porch swing… And talk to each other across the lawns. The tree tops still touch over the tops of the streets and people have American flags out for no other reason then they are patriotic.