Sometimes it makes sense to reflect, but I don't think this is the moment. Right now I'd rather be looking forward, working forward, mostly I'd just like to be reveling in the present. But the future is difficult to ascertain here in Wellesley, Massachusetts. And the present is in Meadville, Pennsylvania.
I can recount three excursions to college, briefly punctuated by smoky returns to the house I'm sitting in, the home I'd lived in for 20 years. What is ultimately disturbing is that this untimely reflection forces me to admit that these years (divided by school days, night fun, dorm stays, and burn runs) have done nothing to solidify a past I no longer care about.
You see, here in Wellesley, there is a box of stories on top of a hill that overlooks the town. From this bluff you can see church towers scraping skies and sometimes even sunrises or sets between obligatory green inhales. And, well, it only makes sense now; now that I have to drive four hours just to visit a hometown friend in a hometown so far from home, that my story got washed away while I wasn't on this side of somewhere.
It only makes sense now; now that Cottonwood and Sagamore, Meadowbrook and Louis vomit a mysteriously familiar unfairness; now that streets that I once walked down in apathy seep with their own indifference. It only makes sense now that I should ponder a regret that I'm older now and don't recognize my own stomping grounds.
This time I don't feel anything. Wellesley is a hollow town where I did not grow up. I grew up in my memories, I grew up with my friends who I continue to hug outside of Wellesley's timeless borders.
Even if my heart swells every time I think of the fire-engine jungle-gym, the overgrowth behind Bates Elementary, the tennis courts, and the Brook Path. Even if my heart swells every time I think on Peter's Pizza dressed in baseball fatigues, or leaving backpacks outside Linden Deli. Even if my heart swells every time I remember lunch specials at Tian Fu, mornings at Magus, frisbee at Dana Hall, stealing CDs from Sam Goody, and clambering up on top of a roof with a bong because it's Wellesley, and despite the worldliness of our teen-aged lives in which we hardly struggled, we could not think of anything better to do.
I feel nothing for this town. This time I'm ready to leave.
