The Sidewalk

I turn the corner, past the house with the pending divorce. I look at the home with all the beautiful lighting, a smaller home but certainly impeccably decorated.

The brick posts let me know I'm leaving. The smaller, well-kept ranch style home transports me to the next neighborhood.

Now I'm in a new world. Not just the 1970s world of the new homes near unused farm land. I'm in the world where I grew up.

I'm walking. Down the street. Turning right, the sidewalk. The small building with an insurance office and a salon.

A wooden fence as the sidewalk angles up... the hill mildly steep, climbing toward the large lot with the beautiful home. The one with the barn behind it. The one with the huge tree that backs up to my yard. There's a pond in front and a long, winding gravel driveway. It's nearing sundown, and the sky is bright pink and orange and fading blue.

Just past the farm house to the right is the church. The meeting. A basketball goal.

If I stay on the sidewalk, I'll end up at the tiny market and probably buy a soft drink.  Keep going and I'll be at my elementary school. Behind the school, a park. A place to get lost. To wander. No one is ever there. That's as far as I can go. Or, as far as I should go.

All the while, I'm resisting. I don't want to go back to that world. Not now. No. I'm on the sidewalk in the neighborhood where I now live and I'm also right there, walking up the hill. Wanting to go back and take that walk one more time. Probably I'd be surprised at how short it is. How in just a few minutes, I'd go from my home to another world. Maybe pass Simon's old house and the trailer out front where his family lived.

But I don't want to do this now. Not now. I just want to walk. To have my head be clear. Free of work and life and empty and not now. Not this now.

I turn back into my subdivision. The brick posts ushering me in. I turn right, the glowing homes and perfect yards like a safety net, pulling me back from 1985. Pulling me back to now. I want to cry. I want to go back I want to have that memory of the walk and not feel this way.

This was only a few minutes, maybe not even a minute.

I keep walking. The normal path. And my phone tells me the walk has been nearly an hour and I've only gone two miles.

Did I stop? Where was I? My normal walk is 3 miles, 45 minutes. Sometimes a bit faster.

Two miles in one hour? What happened? Was I standing there. No one passed by, at least no one walking, maybe a car or two. How can I be sure?

"Did you do three miles?" she asks while I stand at the fridge taking a drink. "Yes. Three miles." She notes that it took a bit longer and I mention a house I was studying, some work in the yard there.

Where did I go? Did I lose 15 minutes?

I want to take that walk. The one at home, where I grew up. I want to take it alone. Once more. Just to see what happens.