Wednesday, July 4, 2012

We are shaped by summers past

     I believe that who we are is determined by the summer night sounds that sang us to sleep as children and no matter how far or how long we run, our journey's end will almost always be right back where we started...more or less. For me it's in the rush of cars passing by on a distant highway, the urgent howl of midnight freight trains, the persistent cricket song and the rise and fall of the cicadas' high summer drone.
     I may have become accustomed, for a time, to wailing sirens, the beat of salsa music floating on the breeze and the buzz of a million lights, TVs and conversations but home will always be staring at the night-clad world through the metal mesh of a screen window wondering where those people in those cars whooshing by on that distant highway are going. A corn and hay scented breeze wafts through an open window, I turn my face into it and I am seven years old again...wondering. Laying in my bed, I pick up my tin can phone strung between my room and my brother's next door. I ask him where he thinks they're going, those people out there on that highway. We talk for awhile until he tells me it's time to sleep and if I go right away we can meet in our dreams in Candy Land which was to me a world of endless shelves piled high with every color and flavor of candy imaginable and it was all free for those who could dream themselves there.
     My journey took me far away from home, from myself, for many years and I haven't thought about Candy Land since before my brother was lost to me but I never stopped wondering about the people traveling highways late at night and I've come back now to the place I started and it feels right...more or less.

2 comments:

  1. Aww, I love this post. Precious, beautiful memories to be held onto for all time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beautiful :) I can totally relate. I may live in the US of A now but I'll always be a pigtailed, snot-nosed kid from a small town in Africa :) and endless highways will never replace the dirt roads I walked as a child.

    ReplyDelete