Now: I recall a sense of déjà vu overcoming me as I stood on the street corner facing the subdivision across the dusty gray street.
5 Years Old: It was a street of big houses and bigger trees that curved away as far into the distance as my five year old eyes could see. Peaking above all the house was a particularly large stone house standing grand and sporting a red aluminum roof. The strong red stuck out oddly amongst the gray domiciles and I wondered what it would be like to live there. We had just been to the park which had vast well-kept fields and less kept woods and even a few tame hills that a child could log roll down while giggling with glee. I held my mother’s hand tightly and gazed at the roof intently trying to absorb the feeling of the colour when everything around me was dusty and dirty from a very dry spring. Everything else was shades of grey, brown, and tan like a dried up riverbed that was flaky and cracking in the heat. It was a thing I did, trying to feel what I saw like it could imbue me with some unknown attribute or emotion. The red roof felt like adventure, mystery, and the promise of a really good story. It reminded me of cherry lollipops, red balloons, and a shiny red ball. For a few intense seconds it was vibrant and the whole of my focus but when my mother tugged gently on my hand to cross the street it was over.
15 Years Old: Ten years later I stood on the same corner and had a flash back to my childhood. I had completely forgotten that moment until I once again saw that red roof soaring above those around it. It was an innocuous moment that only lasted half a minute or so but it suddenly became one of the most vivid memories I now had of my very young childhood.
Now: I don’t have many memories from when I am that young and even the ones I do are picture like and last a fleeting moment. My memories are like looking at paintings in a gallery. They evoke emotion and feed the senses but they are still and motionless. An odd thing, well odd to me even though it might be something common, is most of the faces in my memory are blank or really blurry. Maybe my brain is trying to reconcile what it remembers to what it knows the people from my memories look like now and can’t do it.
