cotton?
I think I get more nostalgic each and every time I come back home. Particularly in autumn. It’s weird though because I don’t even live that far away. I work even closer. My job is 30 minutes away from the town I grew up in. Maybe 40 minutes away from where my mother lives, and I’m rarely there for any extended period of time.
As soon as I’m up to house sit for a week then its a walk down Memory Lane for me. Today’s particular adventure was a sunset walk through Mariandale a retreat center run by the Dominican Sisters of Hope. It was so quiet. It was like my mind was awake for the first time in what seemed like forever. I think living in the boroughs makes you turn your brain off a little bit. Like it’s a symptom of living on top of everyone. You’re brain just goes into sensory overload and it closes down the aperture like the lens of a camera.
My dad used to take me to this place all the time as a kid. I used to ride my bike or play basketball with him during the summer, and we used to go sledding down the big hill during the winters. I remember one time in particular that he got our little red Mercury (Capri?) stuck in the snow. We were with my cousin Gregory, and my dad lost his temper while he was spinning his tires in the slush and cursed in front of us for probably the first time in my life. He probably just said “damn it,” but it put my Leave it to Beaver lifestyle on thin ice(just kidding Dad.)
There was a nun who lived there named Sister Gerard who used to like talking to my father and watch me ride my bicycle. I have really vague memories of her before she died in 1991. For the next ten years my dad would take me to her grave(on the property) and we would plant and water flowers by her grave stone. As time passed I know I started to dread going there to do this. Mainly because I was a teenager and had no interest doing anything that wasn’t smoking cigarettes and hanging out with my friends.
Before leaving Mariandale today I went to her grave to pay my respects. I cleared away a few leaves(they seemed to maintain the grounds pretty well.) Then the oddest thing happened. I found myself saying a Hail Mary for her. The reason that’s odd is because I’m at the bare minimum an agnostic. I’d like to think it was out of respect for her, or the memory of the times I spent there with my father, and not just an automatic learned response, and it doesn’t change my belief(or lack.)
If this were a work of fiction there would have been some epiphany on my sunset walk, but there wasn’t. There were intermittent moments of clarity and daydreams, but what I did walk away with were reignited happy memories from a pretty damn happy childhood.