"We can always come back," my friend said as we walked towards the car. In a sense he's right, I guess. I just couldn't bear to leave. The sun shined across a cloudless sky that day, not hot enough for any discomfort, cool and gentle wind keeping the skin clear. The chatter of birds drifted through the air. I was shown once again how idyllic the neighborhood can become. Its charm is brightest under the quiet Sunday aura of blossoming trees. The colors of the houses seem more radiant, the bricks and cobblestone of greater character. For a while I had traveled to another slice of space and time. The whiplash left me sore.
I've heard the peculiarity of humans is our propensity to narrate. We frame existence as a continuous story, self-idealized protagonist at the fore, structure and rhythm layered onto the eras that pass. In these liminal moments the connecting thread surfaces--what once was returns once more. All the little things that add up over time, mounting into big things, are as if they never happened. The magnolias and cherry trees emerge from their winter slumber to a life never lived.
Maturity seems to mean many things, but one aspect of it must be the ability to organize. The sentiments of one instant cannot rule every instant. Growing responsibility demands a level of competency, professionalism. Someone needs to hold things together.
But at what point does compartmentalization go too far? When are the demarcating walls built too high? Maybe a dam is a more apt metaphor to consider, and a more appropriate barrier. Instead of deep, expansive, permanent divisions between the growing complexities, maybe a more responsive construct is useful. One with a valve to maintain the flow.
We quietly drove east into the darkening horizon, together still after all these years. We rolled miles and miles and miles across the familiar pavement. The end of an old day ushers the birth of a new one, one that can be filled with the love of the past and the joy of the unknown. The partitions are more like fluid boundaries than anything else--I think I've learned how to cross over, for I know the linear path is all a matter of perspective. I can put the times gone in a box, and I can leave it unsealed for when I need them again.
