Little Old Neighborhood

She was a baby here, in the grass and the sidewalks she first walked upon. Crawled upon. Clung to my chest from her carrier, feet dangling, socks peeling and falling without my knowledge, blown by wind down side streets, lost from see.

Now she chases birds down crooked sidewalks, points to strollers with pacified faces, falls on her knees and stands again.

"Baby," she says. "Baby!"

Over a sea of boxes, Hal and I wonder whether the children will remember this house. We print our names on the sides with black marker, agreeing that Archer will (likely) remember it here. The bedroom with the candle-like "flickerlies," the bathroom with two entrances, the "secret passageway" in the neighbor's palm-frond filled side-yard, the stoop we set the water table up on in the summer and how the faucet leaked.

We agree that Fable will not. She won't remember the kitchen and where she hid her measuring spoons. She won't remember which yard the next street over harvested the most weeds for her to pick, the most rocks for her to collect and try to carry - frustrated with her own small hands.

She won't remember her red dress and how she walked all the way home from the Farmer's Market wearing it, following the textured spots like isolated paths.

How much I'm looking forward to new walks on less familiar streets - our exploration of new yards and rocks and trees - making friends with new babies, neighbors, forging secret passageways in our own backyard. Finding new street signs to shake with all our might.

And yet, no matter how much we can't wait to leave, there's a part of me pushing down on time with the weight of me. Toes trying mightily to clutch at our foundation through the heaviness of re-soled shoes.

We were a family here first. When our children were babies. When Hal and I were strangers. When these streets of ours were new.

How quickly we outgrow our bedrooms. Seek new shells. Need haircuts so we can look upon new and unobstructed views.

She may not remember this house. These blocks we walked on daily. The tufts of grass in strangers' yards we trespassed through, picking dandelions and inhaling them on accident before holding hands and walking all together home.

Which is why I take a thousand photographs. Write a thousand posts, all stories that have taken place in her first neighborhood, our memories like stamps in the baby book. And beyond them: the trace amounts of pavement these old streets have left upon her sandals*.

*The invisible kind, impossible to outgrow.

GGC