Aaron and I took a drive yesterday.
To the place we both spent our formative years.
Childhood.
home.
Southern Pines.
We realized several things on our wee outing, and though it may not change your universe, it opened our eyes and wove some wonder into our hearts.
discovery 1.
we have both anchored Southern Pines as a permanent place in our souls. Home is pine needles, sand spurs, and train tracks downtown. Slushies at the convenient stores, dinner at Vito's, burning our rears as we slid down the metal slide behind the old police station off Broad Street, walking to the tennis courts as part of Bob Kennedy's PE class, and waiting for the late night Amtrak to Orlando. Sullivan's shoes (they had quad-A's for my sliver narrow feet), ice cream at what is now Anthony and Dixie's shop, and ballet with Heather and Caroline upstairs in Eleanor Hall's studio- black leotards and tiny pink feet, padding on white tile, navigating blonde ponytail rites-of-passage. Fellowship preschool and orangeades became adolescent walks without mom, middle school, and the Helms twins moving to our town- we played Barbies downstairs in the jewelry store, and I felt like the most popular girl in the universe every time Laura or April chose me as their companion for the day. Across the tracks from Honeycutt is now Casino Guitars- a wooden, safe, musical embrace for Aaron... owned by Baxter Clement, who is one of the myriad commonalities Aaron and I have- I played Barbies (evidently a favorite pastime) as a child, with Baxter's sister, Shannon. Small worlds collide, I guess. Field day and swing-set laughs for me at the park and ball fields off Morganton, baseball practice for him. Groceries at the A&P- his mom and mine were bargain shoppers, it seems- and both of our moms did their financial business at the once-NCNB bank on the corner across from the historic Shaw House.
discovery 2.
I was brought home, as a freshly-adopted infant in 1974, to a little house on One Down St., off Bethesda Rd. Aaron was brought home, as a freshly born babe in 1975, to a little house on E. Vermont. We were 2.7 miles from each other. Not an earth-shattering realization, I suppose, but the thing that brought me to tears yesterday as we took pictures of our old houses and shared stories and life-markers, was the fact that both of the houses are numbered 145. I really did cry. And stopped breathing for a second. Y'all, these little things. I couldn't have picked that, planned it, manufactured it, done it on purpose... any of that.
discovery 3.
our spring sandhills memories smell the same a. now as they did then, and b. to both of us. Pollen be damned, we rode with the windows down and took in as much of the nostalgia as we could breathe.
discovery 4.
Billy Strickland was my dad's best friend. He was also one of Aaron's dad's best friends. I remember Caroline and Heather's phone numbers, and I remember dialing them on both rotary and Swatch phones; the numbers have sadly never been typed on my iPhone. Though now covered in gravel, the jaunt from 1290 down the first half of Bethesda to the Young's still mostly looks the same, and I remember the sandy walk, carrying a yardstick to ward off dogs (a yardstick, Mom? Really? Wouldn't that break?). Dad used to jog Bethesda; I have forever and probably will always think of that road as my "how far is a mile?" marker.
discovery 5.
well, not a discovery, really, but questions we've asked each other for a couple of years now:
How is it that we lived so close, had so many people and interests in common (his parents worked with mine, his mom was a nurse at the peds office where I was seen for years as a child, we have close friends in common), spent so much time in such close proximity, and didn't meet each other until about 15 years ago, here in Sanford?
Full circle.
I left Southern Pines in 1989 after the gut- and life-wrenching divorce of my parents. I thought it would never be ok, I thought I would never heal, and I always, always wanted to move back.
In time, and with God's guidance, it has become ok. He has plunked Aaron into my life and into my heart; I am healing in beyond-description ways; and because Aaron's mom and dad- his roots- are still in Southern Pines, I am now re-attached to a place from which I was really never disconnected.
Home.
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