Things Change

Brooklyn, NY - jack - Monday, September 17th, 2007 : goo

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things change; nothing stays the same. Time changes things, people and places; time afterall is the great emancipator. It is only in our minds that we hold captive the memories we lived, the visions our eyes have seen, the words our tongues have spoken and the voices to which our ears have listened. No matter how much pain and anquish we may have suffered, time heals it all; time only permits one to remember the lost years as fond memories, the others forgotten. And so I remember this house, this abode I walked by for many years, the bricks i tried to count, the windows i tried to help clean, the sidewalk i swept, my room at the top, my mom in the kitchen window, cooking and watching me play on the sidewalk, the sun setting and the violet skies slowly surrounding me in the evening's light, dusk in the fall, my jacket opened....

...and i start to close it partially. summer had long passed on and school had taken over my play days. my time on the sidewalk was ending and as twilight was creeping in on me, it was counting down my seconds of freedom, before the dinner table would becken me and my school books majically open for study time before bath time and bedtime. yes, my memory of this house, my home, my prison, my solitude, my refuge, my wonderful years of youth, my holidays and my family was now over; it wasn't mine anymore, but how could i tell the new occupants of my time there? why were they the new occupants of my home? they didn't know me; my neighbors knew me but they also were gone, and these people, strangers, did not know i existed, i lived, i played there on the sidewalk, in the yard, in the driveway, sitting on my stoop eating a banana. how sad it all seems, as if the house doesn't know me, doesn't call me to enter the doorway and run to my mother upstairs in our apartment, or run to my aunt and grandparents on the main floor and sit by the window and wait for my father to come home. no, time has changed all that. i am older, an old man now who only remembers the faces i have seen, the voices i have heard spoken, the people i said hello to. time has moved on but, no, time has not moved on -- we have moved on and time is still there, my time is still there in the memories, and so i am as the violet sky, the evening light, the shadows of the past and a future with my life.

this is my home in the 40's.

this is not my home today.

the doorway has an awning on it now and above it is the kitchen window where my mother sewed and cooked and watched me as i played on the sidewalk below. the window to the right was her bedroom and around the side of the house, the second window at the end was my room, and this is the view from the bedroom window looking onto highlawn avenue towards west 5th street...

and from my bedroom's back window i could see Boody Junior High school in the far distance and all my friends backyards and on Tuesday evenings i could see the fireworks from coney island,

but before i go let me see myself on my scooter and my younger brother in his cart below the kitchen window where my mom watched us.

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barry: nice post jack

Glen: I got tears in my eyes Jack ! Nice story

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