The Past and the Pending

On Saturday I went up to Gahanna to see Cory. He showed me the woods and the fields behind the country club where he works, and said he'd spent a lot of time there growing up. He and his friends used to camp out there during the summer. 

As he took me to each spot, he would stop and tell me a story or two. We skipped stones where he used to skip stones. He said they used to try to get the stones to skip over the fallen tree, so we both tried; his made it over. Mine didn't.

"If you hit that big rock wall, though, you're an idiot."

"Why's that?"

"I dunno. That's just what we used to say when someone hit it. 'You idiot.'"

At least I wasn't an idiot.

After a while we kept walking. Mostly we stayed on the path, but sometimes we didn't and my dress caught on branches and prickly plant things clung to my tights.

It was interesting watching him as we walked between each place. Like he was reliving the things he'd said and done there. It was all new to me, but all so familiar to him.

He said he'd never really been past the divide between the country club's grounds and the Schottenstein's monster of a house. So I stepped over and had him take a picture of me.

Being there got me thinking a lot about my own childhood, and the places where I grew up. I remember taking Josh to Portland, and how we drove past where I used to live, but I was too afraid to get out of the car. How we never really walked around the way I did when I lived there.

It's been years since I've been back. I suddenly have the urge to, though. To go back and relive all the good and all the bad. To wander through my childhood the same way I wandered through Cory's.

This summer, I'm going on a road trip. I think one of the places I'll go is back to Portland. I'll visit Front Street and I'll walk around Back Cove. I'll take the bus down Washington Ave and eat at Tu Casa. I'll play frisbee on the Eastern Promenade and watch the sunset on the pier. 

And I'll take people with me and they'll see a side of my life that I've kept mostly private up until this point.