Chasing Plastic Buckets and The Mystery of Time

This past weekend I returned to my childhood home to pick up my kids who'd been with my mom for the week and to have Easter dinner with my family. When I was younger, I knew that I wanted to move away from home. I'd never wanted to be one of those people who grew up and then stayed and lived in the community I was brought up in. I'd never even considered it as an option. Now, in just a few hours, I can drive through the amazing Berkshire Mountains, cross the line between New York and Massachusetts, and be home in time for lunch. That feels like the perfect distance - no pop in visits but not too far to hop in the car in an emergency.

While, most days, I’m busy juggling work and family and all the responsibilities that come along with it, I am able to get home every few months. When I do return home, no matter the season, I’m always amazed at how beautiful it is there. My parents' house is situated next to a lake which is really a relatively small man-made pond. Their house, the one I grew up in, is a small ranch, the same size, and the same cottage-like feel as many other houses around it that are used by city people coming to the country on vacation.

Lucky for us, our cottage was not for vacation but for every day life. In addition to being able to see the lake, the house is nestled in a hollow surrounded by trees and you can hear the brook in the woods babbling from any open window. As a kid, and even now as an adult, I always had the impression that our little hollow was not just home to us but also to fairies and another magical creatures. It's tucked away, on the edge of the wood, circled in trees, the ground covered in moss, surrounded by fresh air and stars.

When the weather is good, one of the first things I like to do when I go home is to survey the land. I wonder how the landscape has changed since the days when I would explore barefoot in the woods. I recall climbing on the rocks, big giant rocks in the middle of the woods when I used to wonder how they got there, in awe that glaciers had moved the rocks, and then left them in that exact spot when they receded. 

Those rocks may still be there but other things have changed in the landscape. Since I left, my parents had a retaining wall built and my dad took down the super giant satellite dish from the 90's. They paved and expanded the driveway and let the brush cover the spot where the dog house once was. Yet, much of it is the same. Even if things look a little different they don’t feel different at all. I love to walk the dirt roads around the lake. I could close my eyes and walk every road that way because I know exactly where to go. My feet recognize every incline. My nose remembers the smell of the dirt and the pines and the decaying leaves on those days when fall transitions to winter.

If I allow my mind to quiet, just for a moment, I can hear the sound of my bike tires rolling across the dirt on these roads, the spokes catching the light of the minerals and the mica sparkling on the ground. I can feel the coolness of the water around my feet and ankles as I chase a plastic bucket down the stream, seeing if I could hop rocks faster than it could float. 

Being home so easily transports me back to my childhood. However, nowadays it is a very strange feeling to be home because I am no longer a child there. I am now an adult and, like the landscape, some things about my life are the same but most things have changed.

When I was a kid, my parents had no age. They weren't old and they weren't young, they just were. Now, I am keenly aware of how old they are. Now, I return home and we have conversations about their health, the deaths of our loved ones, and the new retirement community going up in the center of town. We talk about how nice the houses there are and how convenient, yet small, they are. We talked about how all of their stuff wouldn’t fit in a place like that. We talk about how they could make modifications to their current house so that they could stay there if and when the time comes that mobility is a problem for either of them.

They’re not ready to leave their house and I’m not ready for them to leave it. If they sell their house, and move into some sort of retirement community in the center of town, it means things that none of us are ready for. It means my childhood is over and their days raising a family are over and that we are all in a new phase of life but I didn't have a minute to take stock in the first phases of my life and I kind of want my current phase of life to be able to spend some time with my parents during this same phase of life, too. That isn't possible because we can't time travel or stop time. Time: "indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future(Wikipedia you're so eloquent)."

Time! You're mysterious and invisible but omnipresent. Time! You're killing me.
Wait, time, you really are killing me. You're killing all of us. 

Last weekend, as I walked the roads around my house, I internet searched for information on any of the houses that had real estate signs posted in the yards. Over the last few years, I’ve felt a strong need to have ownership of land there. I feel in my gut that I must not lose physical contact with that place. I must stay connected. I never want there to be a time when I do not make seasonal visits to the roads I used to bike on, the lake I used to swim in, the rocks I used to climb on. One day, I know that our family ranch cottage will not be the place I hang my coat after a walk along the dirt roads, and that I may never race a plastic bucket down the brook again, but I hope that my current phase of life family can find a place that helps me to always physically connect to my old phase in life.