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March 25, 2005

spite and malice

So being home makes me want to see home, and I take Herself and Moo and my nephew across the river and we drive along the shoreline--I get so lost in thought that I keep missing the roads I want to turn onto. We drive down Main Street and I point things out. There's Johnny Cake Hill. There's Library Lane. There's Duck River Cemetery. There's the Congregational Church.
"I got married in that church," I say.
She says, "To Daddy?"
"No, to J."
"How did you meet him?"

Moo says, exasperated, "Don't you already know the answer to that? You ought to know it by now; every time we come back here we have to hear Mom's life story. Every frickin' time." I look at him, shocked, and in spite of myself I laugh. It's true; I do this every time. I forget how this is so much more meaningful to me than it is to them.

When we get home I tell my sister what happened. She cocks an eyebrow at me, says to Moo, "I haven't heard that story so much; I usually hear about when she lived in Essex and used to walk every day to feed the ducks and blah blah blah." Yikes. Now I'm mortified. Mortified and boring, apparently. "Sorry," I say.
"That's okay; I know it's comforting for you."

Oh, and she is so right. I am comforted, and reassured. I was a child, and then I grew up, and this is where I did it. Things are the same but not the same--they look the same but it's decades later and they are not. I realized yesterday that I have known J. for almost 40 years. Yes, I'm beginning to get a firm grasp on nostalgia. I don't have to worry or wonder about what's going to happen when I'm here--it's already happened, and I can let it be what it is. It can stay the same and it's perfect. Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.

Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)