A month ago I was presented with the opportunity to return to my hometown of Bristow, OK, to work in a skilled nursing facility. With the declining caseload at the facility I was working at in Kansas, and the chance to work among people I had gone to school with, I decided to take the position. It has given me the opportunity to revisit some places I grew up around.
A few weeks ago, after working a short day on a Saturday, I decided to drive five miles outside of town on West Highway 16 and then two miles down what I use to term "Harlinsville Cemetery Road"; others called it "Alexander's Corner" due to the well-known family that lived at the corner of the turnoff. I drove past my old childhood house; the place I had been raised from the age of 3 or 4 until I was 15 going on 16.
The place had changed, and the backwoods I used to tromp around in were nearly gone. I noticed "No Trespassing" signs posted around my old home and around the creek bed that was located approximately 100 feet off the side of the road. I used to spend hours sitting on that creek bed; escaping the chaos of my home, thinking, dreaming. It was my silent place.
The lot next to my old home was empty except for the junk cars abandoned amidst the overgrown brush and weeds. Many days were spent there with caring neighbors and their children. Behind the place I had grown up there now exists a trailer park where once only trees and shrubs and wild grass grew.
When I lived there the road was once known as "Route 2", but now it has an official street number of which I still have not learned.
It reminds me of how much we truly do change from childhood to adulthood. The years pass, mistakes are made, lessons are learned, love is forged, love is lost, and as Kevin Arnold in "The Wonder Years" said, "And young boys, full of confusion... full of fear... full of love and courage... grow up stealthily in their sleep."
Seeing the place I grew up change as much as it had reflects my own change. It reflects that the past is the past, and we cannot go back to it. We must move forward, changing with the times, evolving and adapting, and while we can look back and remember, we can never go back and live there.
However, one thing that never has changed in the seven miles outside of the small town of Bristow are the roads. They still go forward the same. That reminds me that the journey that I am on, and you are on, heads in the same direction: forward.
The road goes on...
And so must we all...
