Ten Woods Hollow

Going on a trip, a trip I have taken many times before, and an otherwise normal procedure. Traveling down the familiar roads passing by the familiar landmarks, whisking past the window to quick to focus on. The familiarity fleeting away in the rearview mirror, I try hard to keep it in view but pace of the truck on the highway road is too overpowering.

We reach our destination…Woodshollow. The name street name lurking over me with an eerie presents I had never noticed before. The street was small only twenty or thirty homes; number 10 is noticeable right away due to its untouched yard. We pull into the snow-covered driveway breaking the line of undamaged snowdrifts. A neighbor comes out to greet us; she is a fragile old woman that reminded me of a witch out of a Disney movie because of her tattered misshapen cane. I don’t recognize her but she begins speaking to me as if we had just spoken yesterday. My mother and her speak while I shovel the driveway, both of us avoiding the front door of the house, afraid to look in its direction as if the door might catch me starring at it.

Finally, we must breach the crisp white door still hanging a reef suited for spring. The first step is the most unsettling is what I told my self, expect the suspense only grow in my mind, walking deeper into the heart of the living room. Snooping around feeling like I was breaking a rule all my actions haunted by an overseeing eye. I moved through carefully as to not knock anything out of place, everything lying exactly as I had remembered it all the way through my life. The house rang hollow despite the abundance of trophies and possessions.

At least twenty over embellished hats, most of them red. Five types of smoke stained floral printed chairs and sofas. What seems to be hundreds of lavender candles. A vast spoon collection catalogued and untainted, except for about three missing places. An evergreen plant next to the bed that had been dehydrated for weeks had begun to wither. Pictures moved off walls thought to have been rooted in from a lifespan of association. For decades an unscathed landscape now peeled down to bare nakedness, revealing its blemishes and imperfections. Dissembling a lifetime of identity.

Our lives as children are illuminated for us by our Mothers. She is the most significant person in our young life unfolding. She shapes, forms and influences us and our personality just as her mother shaped hers consciously and unconsciously. And it is from my mother and my mother's mother that I am who I am. Events of the past carried forward and looked back upon over time help us understand who we are, where we came from and ultimately where we are going. Memories and personal nostalgia create a horizon in the landscape of our lives. When we are lost or uncertain the horizon is there to help us find.