The image of the first place you called home will stay with you all day. You'll be able to see yourself playing with Mrs. K's antique toys on the braided rug. You'll remember the cabinet's worth of treasures she kept and how she loved to let you explore them under her watchful eye. So caught up you will be in that decades old memory that you will still smell Mr. K.'s sickly sweet pipe tobacco so many years later, and hear the ice clanking at happy hour in his bourbon high ball. You'll taste Mrs. K.'s standing offering: a bowl of the richest, most delicious chocolate ice cream the likes of which you will never savor anywhere else. The feel of Fannie's silky smooth bunny fur is just a touch away.
That crisp memory will recede as you pass Buckley's and are transported back to the late 80's. Who isn't there? It was the place to go...your St. Elmo's Fire. You can hear Red Red Wine and you do indeed feel fine as you wash down a shot of Jaggermeister all the while hoping it numbs your heart along with your throat and mind. You were so young and also so misunderstood mostly by yourself. You were moving forward from high school to college, but still looking back longingly. One foot in Madison and one foot still firmly planted in Shorewood. You already had an idea that would cost you, just not how much. Is that INXS? Yep, someone played I Need You Tonight on the jukebox. You see him. You knew you would. He's playing pool. He sees you too. He smiles and looks as happy to see you as you are to see him. It feels like kismet this cued up song, this chance sighting.
While You See a Chance comes on the radio real time and fast forwards you a few years. Steve Winwood always reminds you of your brother. You are sitting around his living room. This new place is more bachelor pad than starving student slum. It's comfortable. It has character. You can see the expression of intense mama pride on your Mom's face from across the candlelit room. You can feel it. It's palpable. This is all she wants for her kids. To be near. To find happiness. To find their ways. You are all so satisfied and happy in that evening that it is almost tragic.
It strikes you as you drive down this boulevard you used to commute on every day with your Mom how much things change and how quickly. Despite the fact that it's been more than thirty years since you lived in this neighborhood, two decades since you allowed your heart to be broken, and fifteen years since you thought life couldn't get any better, it really seems like yesterday. A blink. A flicker. A flash. A tear. And you hear Robert Frost as your eyes water and your heart swells:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Sometimes the roads you travel are not by choice.
