this is why i love going back.

there are many reasons why i love to see my friends, but that right there is why i love to go back.

in the just-over-24 hours that i was in augusta, i spent probably nine of them at my old elementary school (which we finally managed to break into and take many incriminating pictures of... hey. we're alumni. it's our right), three of them driving around looking at all our old haunts, and much of the rest of the time simply reminiscing and looking at old pictures and reminiscing some more.

as jaime said, we all lead completely separate lives: i have since made the 3000-mile-jump not once but twice, zoe has gone from public to home to private schooling, kira is a sophomore in college, and jaime attends the school where we all would've gone had life run a completely different course, this time without branches. between us we cover the fine arts like a neat little four-cornered blanket; each to her own corner but ultimately connected in the art and soul of our craft.

the art, much like the people.

as a whopping four-year stint, augusta was my family's longest stay to date. and due to this not-quite-constant uprooting, i haven't (until this year) really ever been in a place where i can remember much beyond a few years. i don't marvel at how people have changed because, to me, they've always been the way they are now. i don't remember this teacher or that person because, well, i remember a whole set of different teachers and people from places no one else knows or cares about. so it's just nice sometimes to be able to be surrounded in the places i associate with my childhood and the people who remember the things i do.

because our childhoods are what shape us.

i've said this before and i'll say it again. i am more animated talking about rocko's modern life or the jupitan game that consumed our lives until, well, still to this day than most other subjects. i am more wont to remember being picked on for being white in the sixth grade than any other injustice that has happened to me or others in the years since.

those years stand, frozen in time, and come springing back to life every time i go back.
i don't know what it's like to just have been there. i don't know of very many changes that i was present for the before and after and everything in between. there is a before, a snapshot of the last time the people and the places were a part of everyday life, and an after, a quick rundown of the new everything. there is no such thing as a gradual evolution in my mind's eye, only jarring reality checks coupled with sweet reminiscence of a time when my peers and i could and would easily monkey up and over a six foot wrought-iron fence to reach the new courtyard of the elementary school, access to which we felt was our inaliable right.

not to say i'm not glad for the way our lives have branched and ultimately arrived on the cusp of even greater changes... i am. but it's just nice to remember. and to be with the people you still know and love from then. to have that history and know you still have a future.

and i haven't said much in the way of the other people i saw... not because i feel any differently or any less silly and sentimental, because i most certainly do, and probably more than i should. but this is where i spent the most time, especially this trip, and this is where i have the most history. this is what i see when i think of a simpler time, or at least a time when we stressed over less complicated things.

this is what springs to mind when i think of the days when boobs and shaving and menstrual cycles were an exciting thing of the future, when a single game could envelop our lives and we could shut out the entire rest of the world with a dismissive "snotpiz," when hours were spent confining ourselves to bed and reading in the bath and playing mermaids in the pool and having camp outs in the backyard and playing midnight hide-and-seek and believing in santa clause and learning to "change classes" and still being good at math and thinking 75 pounds was a lot to weigh and being the only ones in our class able to read and walk at the same time and being constantly with a book in our noses and running around in our underwear for no other reason than it's hot and cartwheeling home from the bus stop and reveling in finally being fifth graders and devising ways to steal the "quiet cups" at lunch and already knowing the goody-goodies get away with everything and riding bikes over potholes and flying off the swings from unimaginable heights and racing on the monkeybars and...

this is where my soul goes when i want to be away.

this is westmont.
this is augusta.

this was my childhood.

ink :: graphite