It's that time of year again. Auld Lang Syne. Times Gone By. (For those of you that didn't know what Auld Lang Syne means, I looked it up--yes, I didn't know either.) Ok, so Times Gone By isn't exactly as interesting as Auld Lang Syne, but it is that time of year that we look back at another year gone. I suppose it's been an interesting year. The end of the war in Iraq (let's not go into the trauma of the bombings starting back up as soon as we pulled out--another blog perhaps). I'm pretty sure that Lindsey Lohan was arrested again, and Michael Jackson's doctor was found guilty...(ok, maybe not pretty sure, I might be guessing). There's the extent of my world knowledge. (Ok, maybe not, but this is not about all those weirdos that get paid for entertaining us.) This is quite simply another year gone by and all it means, or not.
If you had told me 10 years ago that I'd be living in Kansas, I'd have told you that you had lost your mind. My ex is from Missouri, and I remember telling him 20 years ago that we didn't need to get married if he ever was thinking about moving back after the Navy. Funny how you can remember certain conversations like they were yesterday. We had gone to his parents' farm for Christmas, and in spite of spending a lot of time on my grandparents' farm growing up, at the time, anything smaller than Jacksonville, Florida was unimaginable. I wanted to stay in a major city, preferably a shoreline city where the beach was never more than a 30 minute drive. (I was such a beach bunny back in the day.) In retrospect, that was probably one of my more ridiculous conversations. I'd like nothing more than to have 3 to 5 acres, with the neighbors far enough away that I could wander around my yard stark naked if I choose to. (With bushes or trees blocking the view, perverts.) The beach would be nice, I'll admit, but frankly, I can go visit the beach and be just as happy. In fact, now it seems to be more of a novelty--possibly because I look better in clothes now than my bikini. Ok, probably not, but feeling the need to maintain a hard body becomes more important closer to a beach. I'm quite content not worrying about it. Kansas isn't Missouri either. It's not as flat as they claim, at least not the eastern half of the state. It's actually quite beautiful, and probably a geologist's dream come true when you can drive by proof of shifting ground anywhere in the state. Of course, ten years ago, I wanted nothing more than to live near my grandparents' farm (without the farm--can you see me feeding chickens?). Kansas was a million miles away and in the wrong direction.
Home, or at least my childhood home, was a couple miles off Lake Erie. I longed to go to Red Wings games and go ride roller coasters at Cedar Point. I missed just sitting on the shoreline staring across the lake at the Canadian coast. That would've been side-tracked if one person had made different decisions (and that really is a different blog), but the train chugged right along. The boys and I moved back to the area my mother's family had sprung from. It sounds like a dream come true. It probably was for a while. I had been on the Red Wings waiting list since the first year back to college. My season tickets came through literally three months after we moved. The boys and I would drive up to Detroit to see the Wings. Three playoff seasons and two regular seasons, 14th row, right off the 1st and 3rd period home goal line. Hello?!? Can you say completely awesome!! Cedar Point was as great as it ever was, and I even got into photography again. My shoreline at the lake had changed, now instead of needing a blanket to sit on, they had placed a walkway and benches there. Apparently, I'm not the only that could find peace there. But everything else had changed.
Home wasn't home anymore. The old Jeep plant had been torn down--all that was left was the immortal stacks. Not sure why they left those, but I hope they leave them. It's all that's left of a World War II monument. Where all the Jeeps for the war were built, and a testament to the strength of American women who did what no other women were ever expected to do--help win a war. Thanks to those women, we all still speak English. My grandparents' farm house had been mutilated from the outside with brick-efface. They didn't even see fit to try to keep the old Senator's home intact. Forget the fact that my grandmother had it recognized as an Historic Site. Apparently, the State of Ohio did. Reminds me of that song by the Pretenders (Chrissy Hind was from Ohio)--"I went back to Ohio, but my pretty countryside had been paved down the middle by a government with no pride. The farms of Ohio had been replaced by shopping malls, and muzak filled the air." All my childhood dreams of a great white farm house with raspberries and blackberries in the ditch, a gi-normous lilac, pear and Lincoln apple trees, evergreens and oaks, all gone. Just a rat hole with brick-efface. The area was already feeling the crunch of the economy failing--hundreds of degreed personnel unemployed because the union chokehold where the only way to continue to meet the contracts was to let go of anyone who wasn't union and didn't have the title "manager". The us and them mentality was definately hitting the brink, and now one might say that the tables were turned. Truth is that those tables turned a long time ago. A junior engineer working 60 hours a week for $50K versus a high school diploma making $45K for 40 hours of repetitive non-skilled work. Yea, something is seriously wrong there. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for someone making enough money to pay their bills and live the American dream. It was the fact that maybe the American dream has become "what have you done for me lately" rather than the American dream as most of us envision it. It was disheartening, to say the least. Other than my beautiful Lake Erie and my Red Wings, well, it wasn't home anymore. Home had left shortly after I did, if not sooner.
Sometimes I still lament over leaving South Carolina. Ten years ago, I really couldn't imagine staying there. A crazy (and by crazy I mean violent) ex-boyfriend. "What are you?" almost everytime I went to Walmart, Target, Winn Dixie or the Piggly Wiggly (for those of you that don't know me personally, I apparently am ambiguous looking). And, of course, the curse that seems to always follow me--crazy people are magnetized to me (and South Carolina seems to have an unfair amount of crazy--all the inbreeding perhaps). I remember a conversation with the boyfriend (the one mentioned earlier, not the nutjob) that I had a couple years before I moved. He didn't want to "defend" me anymore. Like I said, funny how some conversations stick in the mind. It wasn't anything I did he told me. I knew that; everyone around me knew that (ask my sisters). But, he had done it before for his ex-wife and that hadn't worked out for him. He envisioned me leaving him for someone else. The conversation was not the best conversation. What I remember most is the cracking noise in my head as my heart broke all over the place. Still, I made some of my closest friends there in the upstate. I rekindled my love for motorcycles, and I lived in one of the most diversely beautiful areas both in people and scenery. The mountains an hour away, and the ocean a little over a 3 to 4 hour drive (depending on the destination). I loved to go hiking, visiting the fish farms (the boys so loved the trout farm up in the foothills), and riding the curvy mountain roads.
Auld Lang Syne. Times Gone By. Memories one after the other pile up for most of this time of year. Some we might lament, but to what end? The future is just as bright as the past. My Grams used to say that the past is so much clearer in the future. Maybe that's why it's so much brighter than the present. Today is only as clear as our looking glasses allow it to be. The truth is that time will continue to tick away. Ten years from today, I'm sure I will look back at today and lament the changes of some things but still relish in the brightness of the some of them too. Such is life. As I remember these things then, I'm sure once I review everything as I have here, all I'll be able to say is the only thing that seems to say it all. Auld Lang Syne.
No comments:
Post a Comment