You're already a voice inside my head
- Blink 182
This place is full of memories that haunt my run. There's Randy's Auto, owned by my dads BFF (do dads have BFFs?) when we lived here. Here's Picos plant world where I spent a long slow summer moving from planted tree to tree with a hose and my headphones. Here's Deadmans curve, remarkably softened from when I drove it perilously in my youth. Here is the tiny cabin where my grade school crush lived - I squeezed an anonymous love note into his locker in 8th grade, only realizing later that I had spelled his name wrong. I spelled it like the dog who mercilessly killed my own dog in front of my helpless eyes one cruel summer day. Looking back I'm not sure what my 13 year old self expected to accomplish in either scenario - to this day I'm not good at love or saving the objects of my affection. And here is the lake where I sought refuge after being fired from Arby's, and the building that used to be Arby's, now a Mexican restaurant. Curse you to this day! And here is Debbie's old house where we had slumber parties and were scared to the core by Children of the Corn. And here's the old Strauss' market where we used to ride our bikes to buy 25 cent candy with our allowance. And here's the creek where we used to ride to fish for crawdads, which my mom would cook screeching and red if we brought home a big enough haul. And the humane society where I went on a field trip with my Girl Scout troop to find my own cat in one of the cages, much to the chagrin of my mother when bringing the cat back home at my insistence. And the side road leading to my friends house where there was many a party with the parents out of town, and many a hungover morning picking up beer cans from the lawn. And here is the lake where my little sister got lost riding her bike. And the road where my dad would run and wait for me at the end, a hairy bear-like figure in the distance waiting for 11-year-old me to catch up and then run home (only as an adult runner do I understand the true gift this was). And here's the yard where we used to butt heads with the goats wearing yellow hard helmets and where the old man lived who kept his candy bowl full and liked to play adult games with little girls. And our house where we raised colored chicks who were eaten by neighborhood dogs, and raised and then ate the cow, Trouble, which appears to be gone now (the house and cow both). And the barbed wire fence we ducked under in a furious race to the other block when we missed the school bus in the morning. And the Bell gas station where Andy would buy us our bottles of Bacardi and vodka for a wink and a smile, which after the party we then added to our stash buried under a tree in the woods. Oddly, here is a grave marker for my HS boyfriends dad that I stumbled upon on the lake running path several years ago, only then learning that he had passed. And here is where I rest recollecting all of that beauty after my 3 mile lake run this morning, with fat dog curled at my feet and my babies off on an adventure with a new inflatable boat, bellies full with elk tacos. And as the sun sets over the trees and the stars rise, I count my blessings.
