Memories rise like dust in the desert with each step I take in this dry land, familiar yet changed.
Round every corner nostalgia blows afresh. The scent of a memory wafts by, gone as quickly as it came; so quickly one would doubt if ever it was truly there.
This place. It saw me bloom from child to young lady to woman.
Photo by Deibel Photography
These hills hold stories from my heart too numbered to recall. This sky with its glow of golden orange, ablaze in pink and purple – fury of final light when the sun retires; finally relinquishing control to the night watchmen of moon and stars. It blankets me in memories so faint I wonder are they really there, yet so vivid it steals my breath and beckons tears or laughter seep toward the surface where I’m faced once again with the choice to let them go or force them back.
It’s all right there. The joy. The pain. The grief. The loss of ones loved too deeply for words.
I see your face in the mountainsides; hear your laughter in the coo of the quail on the wind.
The sun kissing my face brings your song to mind – and tears to the brim.
Your smile painted in wispy white across the sky.
This place has changed. Whether by the slow march of time, or crusades in the name of “progress”, the landscape is left forever different – like my heart.
So much is exactly as it was before; right where I left it. And oh so much more is desperately unrecognizable. It both breaks and refines me.
For there are pieces of who I am which remain right where I left them – cemented and rooted years ago. Yet so much of what who I see is so very unrecognizable I’m both broken and inspired.
So I walk slowly, placing one foot in front of the other, letting the memories waft upward with the dust of what used to be. I breathe them deep, take them in, and let them out once more, minutely changed from what they use to be.
Just like my heart.
I’ve linked this post up with Time-Warp Wife, Women Living Well, Life in Bloom</small>