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Extra 10% OFF Select Scrapbooking Brands with Code: NSD24
Extra 10% OFF Select Scrapbooking Brands with Code: NSD24
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Give a Cheer
When I saw the Arch, from the distance, my heart skipped a beat. I knew that I was close. St. Louis has always been called "The Gateway to the West", but it hasn't been that for me for a long, long time. Seeing the Arch, it is for me, the portal, to the East, to my past... It is a floodgate of memories to a time where some memories are best left unspoken. Two rivers, several creeks, hills and valleys and I found myself staring at the place where I was born and raised, the place that held my heart captive, that lived idealized in my dreams and my childhood. I see now through my grandmother, mother, adult eyes, a city that never reached it's full potential, dwarfed by the big city across the river, the Gateway to the West. Did I reach my full potential? Was I a skeleton of my former self?
When we turned onto the street that I was grew into womanhood, a felt a tear fall. And then another. And another. Tears of joy at reaching a point on my journey, tears of sadness --this is no longer the home I remember. I mourned my losses. Again the realization was there that when I turned into the driveway that my mother would not be there to greet me with sweet potato pie and greens and cornbread. My father would not be at the grill. My nephew does the grilling now. So it's home, but not home. And even so, when my father walks out onto the porch, and my sister turns to see the strange silver car pull into the driveway and recognition stirs. And when I open the door and rush up to hold and be held by my father, I am once again glad that I made the trip.
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Thanks for spreading positivity!
July 04, 2006