Didn’t really expect to see you ever again…

I remember with surprising clarity the day I left the Tidewater area. I was twenty-six years old and had completed three years of Navy Starter Kit experiences. I was married. We were headed cross-country so I could start a completely new job that by extension embark upon a whole new life, too. As we crossed the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel one final time, the song in the CD player provided a soundtrack for our departure:

I’ll miss the system here

The bottom’s low and the treble’s clear

But it don’t pay to think too much

On the things you leave behind.

I was struck by the words as I suddenly realized that I was bridging two worlds: the one I was leaving and the one I was heading for. What I didn’t understand back then was the circular nature of life’s experiences. In my twentysomething mind, the place in my rearview mirror was gone forever; those memories were now filed away in a scrapbook to be unearthed one day by wrinkled hands.

Just be smart, and you won’t slip and fall.

When you’re young, you really have no time to ponder the nature of your life’s trajectory. You’re too busy hustling to find leads of potential opportunity, and as such you simplify your existence as if you were a pawn in the game of Candy Land. Your path to love and retirement is more or less a direct path with only minor detours and EZ-Passes along the way. While on the road you’ll eat lots of nutritionally questionable food, too. At least that’s how I viewed my path back then.

Get ready to leave home base– never to return! Or will you?

The reality is that life looks more like a game of Snakes and Ladders, and what we don’t really notice is that we are scarring ourselves with the imprints of each zip code we occupy, for better or for worse. It is often not until we find ourselves back in these old haunts that we realize how each manifestation of place still resides within us.

Old ghosts penned in for closer inspection.

The past two months have seen me return to places that I have not experienced in over a decade. One of those was the Hampton Roads area. It felt so strange to return, and at first I had a hard time wrapping my brain around highways and neighborhood networks that seemed just out of my memory’s reach. As I spent more time there, I did however find that I could clear away the brush that had grown over those once well-trammeled paths. Our memory always sharpens to prove that everything we once recorded still resides in the deepest recesses of our recollections. Nothing is ever gone forever.

And you thought you were done with this view…

Of course, I did anticipate that I’d encounter a current of nostalgia by returning to that city. In Norfolk, I walked around the downtown area and experienced a rapid-fire barrage of joy and heartache— contradictory vestiges of a very significant period in my life. I am sure that passers-by were confused as I wiped away tears that were quickly punctuated by an idiotic smile. This part of the return was an experience that took me completely off guard.

If I was able to find this place again, then this point in my life must have been real.

I recently visited another place where I used to live, this one 500 miles to the north. There I retraced my way back to the big house that I shared with several roommates. As I came upon the parking lot, I thought about how naïve I was back then, and also how completely open to life I truly felt while living there. I contrasted the old version of me with the one I am now. In some ways, I can tell that I am different—but in other ways, I still feel very much the same. Again I was reminded that the part of me who once occupied this space still carries on into the present. This really should not have been such a shocking revelation.

To Live is to Fly

I think what ultimately gets me is the reality that no one place or experience is ever actually done. Even now as I think about leaving my current city of residence, I try to remind myself that this is not a compartmentalized chapter. I know that I will undoubtedly circle back through here in the future, and the memories that I stumble upon will suddenly be fresh in my mind. They’re fresh because they were never truly gone. It’s simply a matter of recognizing them for what they are, and being grateful that have made you the person that you find yourself experiencing today.