I have moved back to the neighborhood my mother grew up in, I grew up in, my my children grew up in. This all but forces me to confront mortality and the shifting nature of time. My mother’s generation has etherized into memory, my own childhood friends have slowed and gone gray. Even my children’s friends are grown, many with children of their own.
I think back on the more recent summers with my then-children, thick with humidity and sunburnt skin. There was the whirring of cicadas and our mismatched beach towels damp and draped over the porch railing, reeking of of chlorine. Bikes up and down the street, late afternoon walks to the pharmacy or video store. The days felt mired, stagnant as the neighborhood pond, surface coated in neon green duckweed, an occasional sluggish tadpole breaking the surface. I used to wonder, and not always happily, if summer would ever end.
But now, with my grown daughter, resident of another state and home for a visit, I walk down a shaded neighborhood street, close-set colonials with big windows and welcoming front porches. We pass the house of her childhood friend who has also circled back from far away with her two children, not for a simple visit but because her father is ill. We find out later that he, a good, kind man, has, in fact, died.
I think again about my children’s summers, Groundhog Days in July and August, everything slowing down to still, stuck on a loop. But, as my friends in the pool playing Marco Polo with me during the summer of ’70 could tell you, it just feels that way. The days are moving, no stagnant pond, but a rushing waterfall.