Birth and Growing Up
So my grandfather passed away last Friday. I'm not posting in a plea for sympathy. I've dealt with death before, but it's never the same. The thing I want to talk about is my return to my birthplace, the "friendly" community of Worthington, Ohio. No really, there's a sign that says "The Friendly Community," I have photographic proof from when I discovered this last time I visited, which was in high school which seems very far away now.
Every time I go back, I feel like an amnesiac recalling vague memories and amorphous images. When you are little, you pay no attention to where you are going, the relevant space between things, street names, locations. So, I have to constantly return to discover where exactly I was playing, where we would drive for our Sunday dinners with grandparents, what people were talking about when they would say, Olentangy Road (I only know how it sounds), Old River Road, or take 161. From childhood, I can only remember feelings, childish feelings of either fear (the lightening that struck the huge tree in our front yard and cracked it in half as Todd and I watched it come inches from the front window we were peering out of over our couch), embarrassment (when my huge bag of doll clothes ripped and overflowed while I was walking home from my best friend's house, leaving me stranded and crying, torn between trying to haul them by hand or leaving them and getting my mother), curiosity (seeing what would happen if I just left school and went home, or if I tried to pet the fish in our local stream or my captives in my fishbowl). I have to reconstruct all this from more and more mature points of view, i.e. older elementary age, high school, and now post-college.
This time is going to be hard considering we usually went to Ohio to visit my grandparents, only one of whom is still there. There is a sense of history and community that I have seen no where else. My grandpa is being placed in the church where I went to preschool and my parents got married (although, I have no recollection of what it looks like anymore, except a strange sensation of looking at it though our old Volvo window and catching bouncing glimpses of headstones as I swung and would briefly have a view of the grave yard at the height of my swing). Even the church steeple is dedicated to my grandparents who paid to have it refurbished. They are embedded in that community, as my mind is forever. A place like that becomes a mental community, a place where once great people like my grandpa are forever remembered for their deeds and a place that breeds vague memories and sensations. A place where the dead are remembered and the young create memories.
Every time I go back, I feel like an amnesiac recalling vague memories and amorphous images. When you are little, you pay no attention to where you are going, the relevant space between things, street names, locations. So, I have to constantly return to discover where exactly I was playing, where we would drive for our Sunday dinners with grandparents, what people were talking about when they would say, Olentangy Road (I only know how it sounds), Old River Road, or take 161. From childhood, I can only remember feelings, childish feelings of either fear (the lightening that struck the huge tree in our front yard and cracked it in half as Todd and I watched it come inches from the front window we were peering out of over our couch), embarrassment (when my huge bag of doll clothes ripped and overflowed while I was walking home from my best friend's house, leaving me stranded and crying, torn between trying to haul them by hand or leaving them and getting my mother), curiosity (seeing what would happen if I just left school and went home, or if I tried to pet the fish in our local stream or my captives in my fishbowl). I have to reconstruct all this from more and more mature points of view, i.e. older elementary age, high school, and now post-college.
This time is going to be hard considering we usually went to Ohio to visit my grandparents, only one of whom is still there. There is a sense of history and community that I have seen no where else. My grandpa is being placed in the church where I went to preschool and my parents got married (although, I have no recollection of what it looks like anymore, except a strange sensation of looking at it though our old Volvo window and catching bouncing glimpses of headstones as I swung and would briefly have a view of the grave yard at the height of my swing). Even the church steeple is dedicated to my grandparents who paid to have it refurbished. They are embedded in that community, as my mind is forever. A place like that becomes a mental community, a place where once great people like my grandpa are forever remembered for their deeds and a place that breeds vague memories and sensations. A place where the dead are remembered and the young create memories.
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