Nostalgia

I was thinking recently on a certain point in my childhood. Then I thought about where I was living at that time, and this morning I looked up the neighborhood on Google Earth. Funny how, even from several hundred feet up, you can tell how much has changed. What used to be a dead-end street has been extended and filled with houses. The previously-undeveloped area beyond the dead end was where I would go on all sorts of adventures! It wasn't a huge area, but big enough for an 8-year old with an active imagination; just far enough away to feel remote, yet close to home. It was nothing more than piles of dirt, a trail, and some woods. But I loved it. And now it's gone.

It saddened me. I wanted to be able to look down at that scene and see things exactly as they were. To "remember" with my eyes. But the memories will have to exist in my mind. What was, is no more.

And on the opposite side of that coin, the last time I drove through the neighborhood of my teenage-years, just a few years ago, not much had changed at all! The trees were bigger, but that was about it. Even our house, long occupied by other families, was the same color we'd painted it when we moved in!! Amazing, considering we left there in 1986.

I guess I'm the kind of person who is always looking ahead to the next adventure, but keeps the memories close. After all, it is the sum of those memories that make me who I am today.