As the eleventh month of 2020 begins, I found myself drawn to a map. See, I had this partially formed idea of a story that could be fun to write for NaNoWriMo this year. Unfortunately, I don't know if that's really something I should commit to, what with my wife's recent breast cancer diagnosis. While the treatment looks, at this point, pretty straightforward, I don't know if NaNoWriMo is right (write?) for me this year. If I choose not to participate, it'll be the first time since 2015 that I haven't been a part of the writing challenge. I'm the kind of guy who, when he's experienced a positive thing once, believes he must always experience that positive thing again. This is one of the reasons that I return to It every summer since 2017, why I look forward to October and my teaching of Paradise Lost, and even the fact that I really like commencement ceremonies at the end of the school year. These--and many others--seem to make up the repetitious threads of my life's fabric. Omitting them can be almost painful sometimes.
But if COVID-19 has taught me one thing only, it's that we can let go of the barnacles of tradition. After all, yesterday's Halloween celebration was decidedly less-than-familiar: We barricaded our porch with decorations and pumpkins. My younglings, dressed in cobbled-together costumes, dropped the Halloween candy through a six foot tube from our porch and out the mouth of a pumpkin carved to look like it was puking. A handful of trick-or-treaters showed up; a couple of them laughed at my middle child's costume (dressed as the Orange One from Among Us). I stayed inside where I played zombie video games. By 8:30, the boys were cold, no one had come to the door, and so we settled in to watch Ghostbusters. Pretty tame Halloween, to be honest. This morning, I awoke at what felt the normal time, only to be surprise that it was only 7:30am. It took a bit to realize that the clocks had done their biannual treason and I was again in Mountain Standard Time. I normally don't mind the "fall back" part of clock transition, though this time--Ahaha ha--it did take me by surprise. After filtering into consciousness via social media doomscrolling, I got up and got ready for the day. With the boon of an extra hour, I sat down and started a tentative first chapter of the ghost of a story that's in my mind. May as well try, I figured to myself, since you've the extra time. Two hundred words later, I wasn't about to return to the page. See, I'd set the story in the dimly familiar locale of southern Florida. I served my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Miami back in '02 through '04. I still have a lot of fond memories of those two years--and a lot of bad ones, too, as all important experiences bring with them--and that was the primary motivation for me choosing to have this NaNoWriMo idea take place there. After all, I'd spent a couple of years really traversing the area (albeit behind the wheel of a car) and learning a lot about the Latin community that inhabits it. What better way to add a dash of verisimilitude to my story's stew than with a revisit to my old tracting-grounds? My story involves a middle school student, so my first order of business was to dig around and see what middle- or junior high schools were in my favorite area of Hammocks. Despite knowing, even as a barely-even-twenty-year-old missionary, that I wanted to one day be a teacher, I didn't put a lot of time in learning about the school system of Florida. Sure, I probably asked more questions about school than most missionaries did, but I remember really only learning that they started--and got out of--the school year later than I was used to, and that they didn't like the statewide test. Some things don't change, regardless of where you are. I had some faded memories of noting that there seemed to be more external hallways, as well as a tendency to have multiple floors (which was odd to me: My high school's design is a sprawling single-story affair, though I've come to learn that my experience is hardly the norm). But what else was I missing? I hadn't asked kids what it was like to go to school near the turn of the millennium back when I had the chance. I could maybe ask some of my social media contacts--though I don't know if I'm going to put enough effort into this story to make it worth soaking up someone else's time. At any rate, I started poking around, trying to find schools that I maybe biked past during my final few weeks in the sweltering suburb of The Hammocks. It didn't take long before I found the old Little Caesars Pizza where my roommates and I would frequent--usually once a week--to buy ourselves (each, no less) a Hot-N-Ready pie. Shoving past the fog of years, I used Google Maps' Street View feature to plop myself in the middle of Hammocks Boulevard. Off to one side was the familiar-yet-forgotten archway leading into the Blossoms subdivision. A member family--an older couple, if I remember rightly--lived at the far end of that street (which is pictured at the top of this post). Seeing it gave me a jolt. Not surprising that it was the same place I had passed so many times, but that I had actually found a piece of my memory on my little computer screen. I slid down the digital road for a bit, noting Hammocks Middle School to my right (as I was trying to retrace my decade-and-a-half old bike path home, I immediately headed north). I had never noticed it before; or if I had, I'd forgotten. I tried to find my old apartment; no luck, though I think I may have come close to finding it. (Didn't I use to live just off of SW 154th Ave? If so, what was the lane, if it was indeed on a lane?) The then-familiar turns are now lost, to say nothing of the difference of tapping my way through the streets as opposed to cruising on my bright yellow 15-speed bike, right-pantleg tucked into a sock to keep it from being eaten by the gears, tie flapping in the humid breeze. I hunted down the chapel where I attended services, where I helped baptize the last family on my mission in May of 2004, a couple of weeks before I returned home. I smiled in fond remembrance at seeing the Publix nearby, marked on the Google Map with the white grocery cart on a blue field. Seeing that reminds me of the Miamian habit to abscond from the grocery store with the cart (many of the people lived close enough that they didn't need to drive or they were carless), resulting in occasional graveyards of abandoned wire carts on the side of the road. My companion and I, biking past them, would do an impromptu joust where we would give a nearby shopping cart a swift kick as we cruised past. If we could knock it over, we won. I only won once, though it nearly sent me toppling over, too. (As a 130 pound--maybe 150 counting the bike--elder with a poor grasp of Newton's Third Law of Motion, I didn't realize how solid a wire cart really is; I understand that better now.) I tried to find other familiar landmarks, with the occasional, "Wait, I think I remember that!" mumbled as I zoomed in and out on the map. I cruised to other areas where I'd live, including Hollywood (we're still in Florida, mind you) and stared at the bizarre-yet-endearing semicircle roads that spiral off of some of the traffic circles there. I looked over Bayside, where we missionaries would sometimes spend our preparation days. I gave a fond sigh as I looked at the grid-like (and completely out of sync address system) of Hialeah. Memories of October 2003 came, when the Marlins won the World Series and bedlam brought us out of our apartment. (Missionaries for the Church aren't allowed TVs or to listen to the radio at that time, so while we knew that the World Series was going on, we didn't know any details. I, personally, don't think there's a way for me to care less about baseball, but I was still happy that the entire city, it seemed, was happy.) Cars honked, people shouted, and it sounded almost like we were being invaded. But, no. Just baseball. Other recollections slip in and out of my mind, not only as I fiddled with the map but also as I write this essay. I don't consider my mission often--or, more accurately, I don't dwell on my mission often. Every time I speak Spanish, it comes with it a whiff of humidity and too-sharp sunlight. Whenever my "second state" does something newsworthy (which is now memetic, even), I think about some of those places that I took for granted, took for constant. It's natural to do so. Yet locations are Horcruxes of memories: They're places where parts of our souls are shaved off and stored, personal snapshots in the photo albums of our minds. Revisiting your elementary school, saying goodbye to your grandparents' home, driving past the turn to your first apartment as a married couple…these nostalgic particles drift around, undisturbed until some excuse puts you back in the place where you once were. Not all of these memories are fond ones--the waiting rooms in children hospitals, the intersection where you almost died--but they're part of the wheres of what makes up our whos. Looking over the maps that I used to pore over in the evening while trying to determine where I would go to work the next day reminded me that it was one thing to see the world this way--removed and above, complete and broad--and quite another to live it. Herman Melville's Moby-Dick has a line that has long stood out to me, and I think that he's pointing at what I'm trying to say. "It is not drawn down on any map; true places never are." |
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