this past Wednesday I went home. I mean home home like the place where I grew up and lived as a child. For the first time I felt no connection to my home town. It happened as I drove over to the old Strafford College campus which is now part of the hospital. The pond and rolling lawns that I played on, rode my sleigh down its hills is no longer. I saw pavement. Concrete laid down on what use to be grass where i use to lay day dreaming staring up to the skies. My quiet escape away from antagonizing school bullies and home situations that were sometimes abusive; neighbors and teachers who didn't understand a child who felt every one's emotions as well as her own. This over load of feeling often left me raw and vulnerable. It was my place where ducks quacked, laid eggs and often I chased them trying to catch just one to take home as a pet;my green sacred space. It healed me, fascinated me and I often went there to play trying to catch the darting minnows, the small fish that zig zagged through the muddy water. Gone. Replaced with swing sets, play grounds and parking lots. I didn't recognize my hideout. It was there I escaped on flying ships, created alter worlds where love for animals, plant and any human being was natural. Words stirred in my mind as I made a u- turn in a hurry to blow this place.
"It is finished." A once picturesque southern town with cherry blossom trees lining the Main Street cut down leaving naked sidewalks. old homes of eras with memories of generations from slaves, to plantation owners to freed blacks torn down for highways that run through once vibrant communities now abandoned dead. It is the street where I lived that I saw Millie coming out of her house to walk her dog. She is one of the only two people who left who lived in my neighborhood before the hospital decided to make it a medical corridor. It is a bland street full of parking lots, medical buildings a hospital know more for lawsuits then saving lives. The medical center envisioned in our community is an ugly concrete tapestry. Lost is the identity of homes, people walking up and down the street, laughter, children playing on sidewalks and the song of the cicadas mating in the popular trees in my yard.
A prophet can't go home nor can I. The ghost of memories no longer linger there. They have left searching for home.
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