About a year ago, we moved to our new home. Actually in a way, we moved to our old home. We moved back to the town I grew up. Different part of it, but still, quite familiar. One of the good things about this place is that practically everything is within walking distance: schools, grocery shop, town hall, the bank, all very convenient. The few places that are just beyond a reasonable walking distance are a little too close to take the car. Before I get past all the traffic lights and find a decent parking space, I might just as well have walked anyway. And so I decided to get myself a bicycle.
I got it on Wednesday and after taking it for a spin I got the following idea. I used to go to secondary school by bicycle from the age of 14. Prior to that I took the train. Cycling to school from my parents’ home. I instantly knew that this was a perfect choice to do as an Artist Date (compulsory weekly task as part of the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron).
So I jumped on my bicycle today and peddled towards the bridge near my parental house. Coming down the bridge I saw that the intersection had changed. I took a left round the fairly new roundabout and cycled down the street where I used to pick up my best friend, after which we would pick up another friend halfway our route to school.
I noticed I remembered lots of the buildings. Some of them where beautifully restored, others are on the verge of collapse. Zigzagging through a number of small alleys we used to take it struck me how much everything had changed and yet, how strangely familiar everything looked. The streets, the houses, an old candy store, the plane-trees, the sound of my chain reflecting against parked cars and buildings. This was so terribly familiar. How could that be? It must have been 20 years since I cycled through these streets. Many businesses had gone, others had taken their place. Houses where torn down and rebuild. But still, the more I saw, heard and smelled, the shorter those 20 years seemed to become. After a little while, it felt like this was never 20 years ago. This was only last week. I had never really taken any other route than the one I was taking to school once again this morning.
The closer I got to school, more memories, vividly detailed, came to me. I saw children’s faces, a buss stop with the girl that intrigued me but I never dared to speak to, I heard conversations my friends and I had while cycling to school, shops we used to frequent, pranks we used to pull, street names we used to laugh about…this was getting weirder and weirder with every push on the pedals. I remembered all of it. So much memories, beyond count or language to describe the detail they presented themselves with. Amazing.
Before I realized it, I was there. I had arrived at the old school. The gates were closed, but I could see enough of it. Practically nothing had changed. The statues on the lawn. The lawn you weren’t supposed to walk or even sit on. The building itself. The blinds behind the windows. I could see myself enter this school for the first time, 26 years ago. Oh my God. Has it been 26 years?
I had my whole life ahead of me. Or so it seemed. I had all the time in the world. Which made me wonder…where did all the time I still had, go?
It started to sink in why I had to return here. I needed to remember what I was waiting for. I needed to find what I knew that I was going to do with my life. I needed to get back in touch with that 13 year old boy that used to be bored to death in this place. What did he plan? What did he dream about?
I rode past the gates of the school grounds and remembered the athletics track a little further down the road. Yes, of course, the track and the football field, the town park and the open space where we used to play softball. Wow, it was still there. And judging from the feeling that rushed through me, I was still there in part as well.
As I left the park, I felt the urge of going to the left instead of the right. But that’s not the road I used to take, then why…? Oh dear, it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks. I know this road. I’ve been here before. I can hardly remember it, but I know it’s significant. And as I cycle further and further, I realize what it is that is drawing me here. It’s a time and a place I haven’t thought of in years.
And even though I have no clear recollection of the streets here – they have changed dramatically – I feel exactly where I have to turn left and right and left again, straight on, left again, cross the basketball field, the second to the left again…and suddenly there it is. A house I had completely, consciously forgotten about.
I was 14 when my mother took my two-year old brother and myself to that place. We where fleeing. We needed to get away from a situation that was no longer safe for any of us. We needed to get out as soon as possible. It was undoubtedly one of the toughest decisions she ever had to make. But she did. She did the right thing. She saved us in ways she couldn’t have imagined at the time. No matter how dark that period was, it was the only way. It lasted a mere 4 months, but it was a pivotal moment in all of our lives. A painful, but a necessary one, nonetheless.
I don’t want to go into details here, but I know that many of us have a recollection of such a time in our own lives. When everything around you seems to fall apart no matter how much you try to keep your hopes, dreams, family and everything else around you together.
This is what I needed to remember. The deep and dark disappointment I felt as a thirteen-year old boy in adults. The disappointment of the perspective of adulthood. Adults screwed up! They ended up being a disappointment to others and themselves. I remember that feeling.
I wasn’t going to be a disappointment. If anything, I wasn’t going to be a disappointment. Not to my family, not to my friends, my potential children or to myself. I wasn’t going to screw up. I remember now.
I’m going to take that thirteen-year old kid for a walk the coming weeks. I’m going to show him what he has achieved. I’m going to let him feel that it’s OK to screw up every now and then. I’m going to give him the sense of security he needed so badly back then. I’m going to let him know and feel that everything is going to be OK. He’s going to be OK.
On the way back home I asked myself the question what all of this has to do with creativity? In a direct and logic way, probably not that much. Indirectly however, it accounts for everything and more. I intend to find that out. Actually the adult and the thirteen-year old both will.
Boy oh boy, it’s only been 6 weeks since I started this journey. I still have 254 to go. This is going to be one heck of a bicycle ride.
Take care,
Karl
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