You gotta be strong, you gotta teach your son
How to stand up straight when you want to run,
How to care and love, how to be yourself,
To be different but the same.  ~Ben Kweller

Sometimes nostalgia hits harder than others.  Sometimes it makes you sad, other times, grateful, happy or relieved.  I’m sitting here in my parent’s house in Jersey and everything is comfortable and familiar despite all the changes.  My brother and sister graduate from high school tonight, 6 and 7 years younger than I am respectively and its somewhat mind-blowing.  Has it really been 6 years since I graduated from this same high school.  Same high school, but drastically remodeled and changed, everything here is the same only different at this point as my visits grow fewer and further in between. 

Taking advantage of having a few days off from work and being greeted with a gorgeous day upon waking I decided to go for a run around town this morning.  I was never a runner in High School, not much of a walker either.  If I needed to get around town I rode my bike, it was faster and I enjoyed it.  Seeing the town now as I went a familiar route I used to bike was also the same, only different.  Not only do I notice different things while on foot and moving slower than on the bicycle, but things have changed as well since traversing these streets.  It was a whole new perspective and I felt like I was touring the town, almost as an outsider except for the fact that everywhere brought memories flooding back that I hadn’t thought about in years.  I started off up Boundary and then through the center of my part of town, I thought in my mind as I planned this route that it would include a little bit of an uphill as I reached the end of that street.  I don’t know if I was just smaller then and hills looked bigger or I just didn’t know any better, but none of the “hills” I encountered on this run would have been more than bumps in the road on the routes I usually run.  As I go through the neighborhoods names and faces run through my mind of who lived where, people I don’t ever think about, people who were barely part of my H.S. experience, but yet they are a part of the landscape of my memories.  Across to the other side of town I continue having these thoughts and then move on to people who I went to school with who have know bought their own houses here and are making new lives and memories.  

Sure I’ve had 4 years of college and another graduation since then, but high school still seems like it was just seconds ago.  Spending last night hanging out with Sara and her high school boyfriend did nothing to help that feeling.  It was just like any other countless night that the three of us spent together during those years.  Aside from the fact that Kyle was drinking a beer, I drove a separate car to get there and Sara couldn’t stay out late because she had work in the morning.  The same, only different.  Sara and I talking later in the evening about the fact that the two of us have undeniably changed in the ensuing 6 years, some better, some worse, but definitely different.  So many of our friends here just haven’t though.  Something so simple as the fact that they all still live with their parents.  I certainly can’t fault people for saving money or doing what makes themselves happy, but the idea is just so foreign to us at this point.  In High School its easy enough to pretend the parents aren’t there, at this point, its almost awkward because you’re an adult too, are you allowed in the boys bedroom to hang out though?  Should we be quiet at night?  Weird.

Heading along the Delaware I see this town in another light, I feel like where I live now is such a water-centric place what with the gigantic lake staring you in the face wherever you go in town, but perhaps its a matter of what you notice.  A good 80% of my route today was along one body of water or another, my old stomping grounds of the creek at the end of my street, the Delaware, Big Timber Creek, this town is surrounded on three sides by water and there are boats and boatyards everywhere.  This was always part of the background scenery, but I never gave it much thought because it wasn’t a part of my day-to-day life.  Only living up in Ithaca have I really started boating or fishing or swimming in the lake.  I thought it was just because it was there and that’s what people do, but maybe there was more of a change in me in relation to this than I realized in passing.  

Nearing the end of my run I enter the park that I spent so much time of my youth in and see all of the elementary school kids running about enjoying their last day of school before being set loose for the summer.  I see the 6th graders, newly graduated as of last night, sitting in the same spot we sat on that day in 6th grade (12 years ago!) signing yearbooks and making sense of themselves as kids transitioning into a new phase of life.  Rounding another bump in the road disguising itself as a hill I see the younger grades running around on the playground, all dressed up like people complain that our children are becoming miniature adults, but there was no denying that these were children as they ran around giggling, yelling and playing.  Exiting the park and heading around the last turn towards my parent’s street I smell first and then see the familiar wild berries that grow along this stretch and drop down into the road where they would often spatter the backs of my legs purple with their juice as I sped over them on a bike.  Thankfully at my plodding easy run pace I don’t have to worry about that particular problem and so I turn onto my street and see the familiar sight of my neighbor walking her dog down the street, only upon nearing her I realize its not the neighbor I thought it was, but someone entirely new that I didn’t know.  

This was undoubtedly one of the best runs I’d had in a while, I felt like I could keep going, but decided to call it at 4.5 miles since I had a lot of stuff still planned for the day.  I definitely need to stop running at the H.S. track, it is convenient and close, but the monotony is just not conducive to having a good run that’s longer than a couple miles.  I enjoyed the time to clear my head and see the town in a new light, it wasn’t a bad place to grow up in no matter how much crap I might talk on it.  Suburbia has its ups and downs just as anywhere else does.  I know South Jersey is flat, but it really hit home while running today, I think anytime I need a pick-me-up about my slow pace I can probably just choose to run a race down here and watch my pace drop drastically when facing a totally flat course.  I think my total elevation change today was a grand total of 33 feet which means I maxed out at 33 feet above sea level since much of the route was at sea level.  I’ll probably find a park for a longer run tomorrow, but right now I’m feeling pretty well satisfied and content after today’s memory guided tour of my neighborhood.