Three folks answered the call yesterday to support 3rd BN 3rd Marines. I really appreciate your commitment to these Marines. Paypal hangs onto the funds for a few days before they are released into my account so I'll contact those who's generosity was so gratefully recieved and let you know the details. I wasn't sure about mentioning you here without permission. I'll post more about where they are and what they might like tomorrow. Sarah, thanks for offering to help dub TV. Yes, I don't think they mind commercials, at least my Marines didn't last deployment. Anything that smacks of home... (Picture:LCpl Samuel Mincey, one of my former adoptees from Kilo Co, 3rd BN 3rd Marines, on patrol in Karmah Iraq 2007)
Speaking of home, I drove through the town I lived in while in high school last night. Having attended 18 schools growing up. Yes. 1-8. No typo-- this town was special in that the last 3.5 years of growing up, we stayed in one place. It became the first place I would call home with a straight face.
Alone for the daytrip, I also found myself driving past the house we lived in to see that time had carried it away and replaced it with a new one. As I slowly rolled through the neighborhood instigating at least one or two neighborhood watch entries I am sure, I also found my spot. Every angst ridden, painfully intense teenager has such a place. (whom am I kidding I still have these spots...remenber the picture in my old header?)
My thinking spot,
if you will,
unlike my home,
looked exactly the same.
Had I had the time
I would have climbed up
on my perch
out over the water
to draw a few breaths,
but there was no time to be had.
It was here I planned the demise of siblings,
went to cry unabashedly,
laugh hysterically,
plot vengefully,
and be dumped by a very short-sighted Senior,
It's where I shredded my first university acceptance letter, and found Sanctuary after I came home from school to find very angry parents asking why said university had called to offer an applicant they rejected a last minute scholarship. So. completely.busted.
It's where I often
journaled,
read
and sometimes just disappeared for an afternoon away from adolescent trials and tribulations to count the ripples stones made as I dropped them into the water.
I even remember sometimes wondering what it would be like when I came back one day all grown up to see, if my tree was still there. Moving so often, I often made promises to the child I was in each place to come back and claim a particular space; to acknowledge my history and somehow give it a credibility hard won with so few roots ever setting deep into any particular soil.
Getting out of my SUV and walking down the creekbed was like opening an old box full of letters and keepsakes kept on a shelf for twenty odd years. Memories rustled in the feel of the grass under my feet, the smell of the creek, in the echos of calls to supper brought to life in the muffled sounds of children playing in a nearby yard. It was even in the feel of the air about to bring rain like all Mays then seemed to do growing up along Oyster Creek . Clear thoughts escaped me.
Clarity came from senses gifting me with a subtle, fleeting poignancy.
Labels:
3rd BN 3rd Marines,
growing up,
highschool,
milsupport
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8 comments:
we all need our happy places, right?
what a poignant post... beautifully written
My past is being wiped out: my elementary school is now a YMCA Work Shop, my high school has been torn down, San Diego Naval Training Center (boot camp) is closed, my ship in the Navy was sunk with the loss of 79 young men (three brothers, a father watched his son go down, and one of my best friends while I was on board were among the 79), my small college is gone, moved out of Atlanta to another state, but my university where I finally received my MBA is thriving and growing. The place in the woods where I use to go when space and time were needed is now a strip mall. So I have to look in the mirror every morning to make sure I’m still here. I guess few things are ever the same as we grow up. For example, behind my elementary school were two hills, the ‘small hill’ and the ‘big hill’, as they were known. I finally went back to the school after about 20 years and was shocked to remember the hills I use to clime were still there, hadn’t changed, but the ‘small hill’ came to my chest and the ‘big hill’ was only about six and a half feet high. Amazing! What! Rambling?? I’m rambling?? Sorry! I’m returning control back to you, Miss Hope.
Beatiful post. And beautiful sanctuary! I would have chosen that same spot!
I'm glad you were able to capture it in a photograph... and in your memories.
Thanks Hope!
Very well written.
I have a spot like that as well, and it brings back many memories, some pleasant and some painful.
I don't go back there as often as I would like, but it is nice when I do.
Thanks for sharing.
I took pictures a couple of years ago of two of the many houses I lived in growing up...I felt like a ghost returning to haunt them and relive childhood memories...
I like your new colors...is that periwinkle or blue? heehee
looks good :)
Nicely done. Not too long ago I had a similar experience, walking in the footsteps of my youth, recalling many memories, seeing what had changed, and what was exactly the same.
Like you I recalled things I said then and reconciled with where I was now.
Very cool post, and very well done.
HOw cool you're "thank'n" tree was still there. Man, it must be in a very remote spot or in a gov't park or something for "progress" not to have ruined it in some way...
18 schools? Geez... You blew my measly 14 all to crap. You always have to outdo me don'tcha?