A Herm on the Road

Yesterday morning I drove to my hometown to accompany a family member to an appointment. The distance is not great in miles, but it has always seemed to me that mere miles don't reflect the real distance between here and there. While it's just down the road, my hometown has always felt a lifetime away. When matters called me there more frequently 15 or 20 years ago, I usually gave a big sigh of relief on the return journey once I hit the outskirts of Lexington, scene of my adult life. Now I wonder if even the psychological distance between here and there is as great as it always seemed.

I don't have the same kind of nostalgia for my hometown that a lot of people probably have for theirs. Some of the good memories I have are for places--like my grandmother's house--that are long gone. I used to have dreams in which I would somehow end up moving back into one of our childhood houses, and I usually felt trapped. I shouldn't be here, I'd be thinking. I'm an adult. I have my own life. More recently, when I dream of being there, I'm often on Main Street, passing the familiar shopfronts as if searching for something, feeling not exactly trapped but perhaps a bit frustrated.

One way I can tell I still have some of my old town with me is through my inner concept of "home." A lot of my ideas for what a neighborhood should feel like are based on my hometown experience of being able to walk just about everywhere, of spending time on tranquil front porches and in pleasant back yards, of being able to get an ice cream cone down the street and a library book a few blocks over. When I think of buying a house, I imagine a scenario that includes these possibilities. So, paradoxically, as much as I wanted to get away, some of my hometown experiences have had a positive, lasting impact.

Yesterday, on the way back here, I started thinking of the many memories I have just of the road I was on. I passed the little church where we once had an end of the year school picnic and water balloon fight, circa seventh grade. A little farther out is the electric co-op building where I attended a high school seminar that resulted in trips and a college scholarship. There's the drive-in where I saw movies with my family and napped in the back seat. Closer to the county line is the house that used to have a Chinese gong and a little Oriental museum, a bit of exotica on that country road that we always liked to look out for.

Then there's the little lane on the right that goes to Avon, where I went swimming with the other sixth-grade girls one summer, "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" blaring on the sound system, and jumped off the high dive for the first time. A few miles more, and there's the quick-mart where I once stopped with my Dad on the way back from Lexington. I don't remember what we stopped for, but I remember the occasion--a gray Saturday afternoon in November--because it so closely matched my mood. I was full of dread over having to find material to make a skirt in home-ec class, a prospect that overwhelmed me. (I wish that was the biggest problem currently facing me, but at the time it seemed a terrible ordeal.)

I've driven that road many times in a more businesslike frame of mind, but yesterday, perhaps because of some pictures of venerable local landmarks I saw while visiting, I was in a mood receptive to memories. As I passed the stately church with the classical facade about halfway between there and here, I thought for the first time in years of a short story I once attempted. It was all about that road, and that church (though I've never been inside it), and the journey from one place to another, short in distance but great in meaning. Something about the prospect of that church, with its Greek columns and its hilltop view, has always seemed to mark an invisible boundary between past and present. It's a herm, if you will: a milestone.

Maybe I'm now approaching a similar prospect, a place with a wider view. Maybe that's one of the benefits of staying with the journey long enough.