Reflections From a Skyline

Reflections From a Skyline

Every once in a while, I take that trek back to my old neighbourhood.  To come home, to my first home. The place where I was born and raised for twenty-three years.  Where I first experienced the fragrant scent of lilacs and discovered beauty amid purple irises, weeping willows and a towering white birch tree. Where I first learned how to throw a baseball and skipped and played in the days of innocence when there lived a Santa Claus, and where I wept at my awakening to life’s harsh realities and unexpected sorrows.

Although no more than a thirty minute drive, it is a thousand miles away.

When I feel that familiar urge to return, I  take the slow, scenic route instead of the highway to luxuriate longer in the distant memories of my youth.  But I have found that this visit, thirty-five years later, is somehow  different.  With each new turn, I squint, searching to uncover some semblance of the life I once knew.   Driving down familiar streets, unfamiliar sights now await me. Gone are many of the old war time houses I remember.  Instead, large, seemingly out of place, modular structures with concrete walkways hover, where small homes with pretty fences and grassy laneways once stood.  I take in my surroundings, all the sights and sounds from my past, longing for those memories to jump back to life.  Hoping once again, to relive the joy and even the sadness, in a way that is still somehow comforting. 

I pass the park where the old baseball field still stands, its chain link fence sorrowfully twisted and bent. Weeds cover the mounds where bases once lay, the three wooden bleachers now cracked and weather worn.  I recall winters spent skating here on the outdoor ice rink, wondering at my illusion of its size, as the space now seems so small and unassuming.  At the far end of the park was once the hill that as kids, we rolled down atop dandelions in summer, and sled down on our toboggans in winter.  Ground that now lies flat,  fenced off for future development.  The south end of the park borders the lake with waves that once glistened in the sunshine and crashed upon rugged rocky shores during thunderstorms.  A place where we skipped stones, paddled a canoe and were cooled by fresh breezes, now professionally landscaped into an inner bay with a pedestrian promenade.

As I gaze to the east, I ponder at the sky above which seems so open and expansive, far from my childhood recollection.  Then, seconds later like a shot, it hits me. The four, tall, ominous gray smokestacks that defined the skyline of my childhood no longer loom high above.  I vaguely recall the news of their demolition, amid reports citing emissions as the cause of high cancer rates in my neighborhood decades before.  Images of my mom rewashing clothes drying on the clothesline tainted with black soot, flashes instantly across my mind.

At the north east end of the park, I can still see the fence with the small opening that we squeezed through as a shortcut to our middle school from grade five to eight.  It is here where we passed notes in the hallway, were chased by the boys in the playground and decorated the gym for school dances while listening to “Crocodile Rock.”   The place where I began to learn that a world existed outside of my own inner sphere and was elected Vice President of our Student Council.   Where a school once thrived, only rusted soccer posts remain.  Winds left to blow unencumbered through the tall grass that whisper their tales from classrooms long since silenced.  Thoughts ripple to the surface of grade eight graduation and my award for “Student of the Year”.  I can’t help but question its importance now, from a school that only exists as a distant memory.

Across the street there is a new four story condo development.  Architecturally appealing, it sits among the shade of several mature maple trees. Staring closely, I can see beyond the concrete balconies and fresh paint to the bright windows and open staircase of my childhood elementary school with steps that led to my future hopes and dreams. The kindergarten room with the colourful alphabet border and arithmetic symbols.  With crayons and playdoh, and blankets in our cubbies for mid afternoon naps.  The wide open field where we played tag under those very same maples and won ribbons on playday for finishing first, second or third place in the fifty yard dash and running long jump.   I think I still have mine tucked away somewhere for safe keeping.  There were no participation ribbons awarded back then.  

On the adjacent corner, is the Church where I sang in the choir and attended Sunday School.   And the black, winding wrought iron staircase, that seemed so regal to me as a child. Not a main entrance, and only stepped upon a few times each year, I awaited the opportunity each Easter to descend in my new spring dress and white patent shoes. Although the staircase remains, the cross has been removed from the building’s exterior.  Now a place of worship for a congregation belonging to a different denomination  it would seem.

The Dairy Cream sign shows it age as it hangs above the shop, the same way it did those many years ago.  Vanilla cones dipped in chocolate were always my favourite.  Many were the times my sister and I would arrive excited to buy our “treats” with money affectionately tucked into our pockets by my Uncle.  I was always amazed at how the chocolate was able to harden around the ice cream before it could melt. Then again, it probably wasn't very long  before it was devoured.

As I stare farther down the road, I see the childhood home of my best friend and the imagined bicycle tracks that lay between our houses throughout those long, hot summers.  Endless days we spent enjoying our newfound teenage freedom, riding as far as we could go and back again, to make it home as instructed, “before the streetlights came on.”  Giggles, and whispers that echoed from her bedroom as we listened to the latest K-Tel album or 45 single on her portable turntable.  The carport, where we parked our bikes so long ago and where as bridesmaids, we gathered on her wedding day, is now an enclosed garage.  The numbers 949 are still adhered to the red brick of yesterday despite the overlay of new vinyl siding.  Short years we were given to reminisce before cancer stole her away at age thirty-six. I remind myself that the smokestacks have been torn down, but it is of little consolation now.

As I approach the street of my childhood, I lift my foot from the gas pedal.  Turning the corner, I coast slowly in anticipation of that first glimpse, still slightly hidden from view behind the monstrous house that has been built next door.  Then, in full view, it is there. The small white house with the black shutters, where the first chapter of my life was so intricately written.  I am relieved at first glance, to see that the house itself looks relatively unchanged.  The old, scalloped aluminum awning still covers the small concrete porch where I played with Barbie dolls and was first kissed beneath the stars.  Slightly rusted, that awning undoubtedly is still a safe haven for large, eight legged spiders to build their intricate webs. “Because we lived so close to the lake,” my mother would say.   Years were spent whisking away cobwebs, fearful that spiders would descend onto my head before I could enter or exit the front door in time.  I hate spiders. 

The street is eerily quiet for mid-day.  I park my car on the other side of the road and breathe slowly, taking it all in.  There is the same narrow driveway with the detached garage in the back.  I notice that our once beautiful lilac bush and birch tree are no more.  Instead, a patio has replaced the front yard rock garden that once grew those purple irises under my bedroom window.  Sometimes, if I look close enough, I am able to look into the eyes of that child and feel her reflection staring back at me.  The eyes that at age five, watched with excitement and anticipation for her great grandma to come walking down the street in her floral dress and white Hush Puppies.  The eyes, that as a teenager looked through that window into a sky full of endless promise and possibilities. And, at age twenty-two, the ones that cried helplessly, into her pillow days before and after her younger sister’s death from leukemia. Tears that forever washed away the last strands of innocence and the leftover remnants of the smokestack’s thick, black soot.

The tall, stately backyard willow tree no longer sways and dances high above the rooftop, like it once did.  Many were the summers spent swinging upon its drooping, ropelike branches leaving it stripped bare of its leaves far in advance of autumn’s own release.  That too, now gone.  It is probably just as well.  My dad always said it was a messy tree.

 I lean back in my seat and close my eyes.  All the thoughts and experiences of those first twenty- three years stream through my mind like a silent movie reel.  Memories that depict my journey, that have brought me back here to this place, in this moment.  And it is only then that I realize, time has irreverently washed away all that I had come back to see.  I look down and reach slowly into my handbag to find my keys.  My heart thumps as emotion sweeps over me.  Joy and sorrow converging, awakening me to the inevitable truth that all I came home to relive must finally be set free. The past to be left there, to rest in the comfort of its own timely experience.

I turn my head and glance towards my old bedroom window for one last look.  To say farewell to that young girl, but she is already gone.  I dab my eyes as I round the corner towards the highway and head for home.

I’ve always hated goodbyes, anyway.  Even more than spiders.