Earlier this week I had a day off and I didn’t have any other appointments or commitments.  A whole day to myself!  It was rainy and cold, but still, a whole day off to myself.  I have a number of “things to do” on a list I keep in the back of my mind for just such a day.  Most of them would be more fun on a sunny warm day, but you take what you can get.  So I headed off to Hidden Lake Gardens, about two hours south of me and just north of a town I lived in when I was a little girl.  My folks used to take all four of us there on occasion; I can remember a narrow road and big willow trees near a pond which held the best thing of all:  swans.

Back then there was no such thing as the internet, heck we still had rotary phones, but today I can share the gardens with you by providing this link:

http://hiddenlakegardens.msu.edu/

And these pictures I took on my dark and dreary cold rainy afternoon trip.  Which was, by the way, a blast from the past. (You can click on the first picture to make it bigger, and then move through them by clicking on the “next.”)

Sadly there were no swans at the small pond, but the willow trees were there.  And the winding drive through the woods was really fun.  I could just image Dad maneuvering our big station wagon full of kids around the hairpin curves, the rear view mirrors just fitting between the trees.

At the rare conifer garden it began to rain in earnest, so I packed it in and drove the rest of the way to the town I lived in until I was ten.  Nothing much looked familiar as I drove into town.  But I just stopped thinking and let my heart drive the car and low and behold, with only one missed corner, there I was in front of the house we all lived in way back in the 60’s!

I sat in front of the house long enough that someone finally came and looked out the window.  I moved along then, not wanting to appear to be a stalker!  When we lived there the house was gray with either white or black shutters.  I say black, my Mom always said they were white.  She was probably right.  The house next to the one I lived in is for sale.  I went online later to see what the values are on that street and was amused to see they are just a little over 10 times what my parents paid for the house back in 1961.

Driving around the neighborhood memories popped into my head, along with the names of  friends who had lived in some of the houses I passed.  I even found the first little house we lived in initially when we  moved to town; the house my two brothers were brought home to from the hospital when they were born, almost 50 years ago.

The only way I could find my elementary school was to drive along the route I walked way back when I was five.  I remembered my Mom saying I had to cross two “big” streets, so again I just let my brain follow my heart, and there was the school.  Funny how much you can remember when you stop trying.

On my way out of town I stopped at the public library where I first discovered my love of reading.  It looks like a castle, doesn’t it?  It’s a museum now, but when I was a little girl we came to this building once a week;  we were all allowed to pick out books for Dad and Mom to read to us, and later, for us to read aloud to them.

In front of the library is a sculpture of a little boy in glasses, reading a book, sitting on top of the world.  That wasn’t there when I was a kid, but it sure is cute!

I stopped at a diner for some supper before leaving town, read the local paper and remembered.  Everything here was the same but not.  Since I had been so young when we left, I didn’t have clear memories of much of the town, so changes didn’t feel like changes to me.  The main buildings of my youth— my homes, my school and my library were still there, still largely unchanged,  a time capsule waiting for my discovery.

This place was the beginning of who I am today. The preamble to the now.  It’s nice to know that it’s still out there.

On the way home, listening to a country station I realized through the haze of my musings that someone was singing the chorus to a song:  “There’s too many memories for one heart to hold.”   True.