Walking around memory lane

I had an hour to kill and I was close to the neighbourhood where I grew up so I took a trip and parked in front of the lot where I used to live with my parents and five siblings.

I say the lot because the house is gone and replaced by a monster house, and they even changed the street address, so there is that.

I decided to walk around the park which was right across the street from my front door.

And the memories started to come.

Playing in the woods, hiding in the bushes, pretending to be escaping from someone, or something. The dinosaur rock is still there - as kids we used to think it looked like the skull of a T-Rex.

The park house was still there. I babysat there quite a few times. One time there was a gang of teenagers outside making a ruckus. The police wouldn't come when I phoned them. So, I phoned my mum. She came. With a baseball bat. Problem solved - and she stayed with me until the parents came home.

The tennis courts where I roller skated, and where my dad taught me to play tennis.

The equipment shed where all the stuff was stored for the little league team. My dad coached for some years, and also umpired there. The big grandstand is gone, and there are two more baseball diamonds, but still, and all, it brought back memories of sitting and watching my brothers play.

The community centre where I took cooking classes, ballet and archery lessons. It has a much fancier entrance way now, but the main part of the building looks much the same.

The hill from the community centre to the field used to seem so steep - to run down, or ride a bike down, or toboggan down.

It didn't seem so steep anymore.

The house where the two sisters lived that I hung out with - I remember us sitting on their top bunk and spool knitting.

The house where the guard geese terrorized me as I walked past.

The old swingset and monkey bars are gone, but I remember swinging so high and singing "I love you Paul, or yes I do...." Paul McCartney, of course. And I once fell through the monkey bars from the very top - ouch.

There was the lawn bowling club where I would often meet the little old ladies with their Pekinese dogs.

My dad and I used to run around the perimeter of the park. Through him I learned that I liked to go on long distance runs. Through him I also learned I like to do long distance swims, but that is another story for another time.

I walked past the neighbours' houses remembering their names.

I drove down the lane to see if the cherry trees were still there. They didn't appear to be.

I realized I had only lived in that house for ten years, although it remained the family home for another twelve.

I have lived in my house for thirty two years.

This is a rambling of memories that came tumbling into me triggered by a place and things in that place.

It reminds me that I am not lost.

I just need to let geography help me remember and find my way.

Even my dreams are kicking my ass

I have been having A LOT of anxiety dreams lately.

The kind where you wake up and

a) it takes you a while to convince yourself it was 'just a dream', and

b) your stomach is in a total anxiety knot that takes a few hours to calm the fuck down.


Today's morning dream was:

a: a derelict car (that was mine although I would never drive anything that big) was laying across the road in front of our house blocking traffic.

b: some guy had taken a chain saw to all our trees on the north side of our house, and I kept trying to get his name but couldn't quite make it out.

c: our sump pump (which we don't have) was bubbling up this oozy brown gunky water and the neighbour's grand-daughter was playing in it.

d: the neighbour's son, reached into the ooze and pulled out some weird cog thing and said I needed to replace it and put it all back together (like I would know how to do that).

e: for some reason there was a toilet in my carport that I was sitting on as the neighbours all came over to see what all the commotion was about, and this young boy, who I mistook for my son, was trying to sell me a silver star pin for three dollars. I bought it (after I got off the toilet).

f: I whole bunch of people arrived in my carport trying to give me the pieces of a game that I was planning to re-tool and market. What?

g: I wanted to call the police to report this guy for cutting down my trees, but people kept interfering with me making the call.

h: I noticed, now that the trees were gone, that I had an upstairs to my house I didn't know about and the one half of the shutters were a different colour (pink) than the other half (brown). I knew this was going to be an issue for my neighbours across the street.

i: The dream ended with me saying - 'that's it, we are selling', and my retired real estate agent neighbour saying - 'you probably don't want to do that with your house being as run down as it is'. Ya think? What with the derelict car, broken sump pump, open toilet and hacked off trees?

I might have been dreaming, but I am not stupid.


So that is how my day has started.

In reality, my washing machine is broken.

So, there's that.