There and Back Again

Listening to: Yentl (Itzhak Perlman)
Pondering: A happy family is but an earlier heaven. (Bowring)

This afternoon, I picked my sister up at the oriental store as she did some grocery shopping. After we loaded the grocery in the trunk, she had to go back inside to grab an order of Peking Duck for dinner. I sat and waited for her in the car, staring blankly at first, at a messy bulletin board filled with old, outdated and tattered want ads. Flyer after flyer, one on top of the other. Room for Rent With Own Bathroom! Caregiver Needed - Weekend Work Required. Garage Sale. Estate Sale. Are You Lonely? Do You Want to Lose Weight? All kinds of flyers, dancing in the cold breeze.

As I watched the flyers “dance” in the cold breeze brought by the fog, I felt a sudden nostalgia of when I was in college, back home in my country. On Saturdays, I had a counseling class that ran until four-something in the afternoon. After class, I’d hang out with my friends for awhile or if I was good, I’d go to the four-thirty mass so that I didn’t have to attend Sunday mass. Afterwards, I’d go home to an apartment I shared with my sister and collect the laundry hanging outside our unit as our dog Mindy watched with tired eyes.

Those afternoons - dusk I think is what you call it, when the sun is just setting and people are just getting ready to head home - always seemed to have a mood similar to the mood I was enjoying this afternoon, as I sat in the car waiting for my sister to return, studying the want ads on a tacky bulletin board. A flood of memories just rushed and made me sad for some reason but also make me smile. Life was so much simpler then although you never think of it as simple then. Our problems were trivial, almost unimportant if you think about it now.

Thoughts of those afternoons are one of my most treasured memories of home, of my youth. I cherish these memories so much though I don’t dwell on them too much. But every now and then, I do allow myself a glance back at those moments, those afternoons, those happy memories of long ago.