Past Path Presence

 

At around 7:45 AM this morning, I set out on my now-routine daily morning walk. I’ve been walking 2 miles a day lately and at a decent pace. It’s not only getting my heart rate up; I also get that whole Huberman "morning sun” benefit as a bonus. Only today, because I was picking up my mom in Cupertino and I had the time beforehand, I took a walk into my past.

Some 40+ years ago marked the start of a six-year stretch during which this route was traversed five days a week, nine months a year, always en route to Matt’s house before heading to school. The last time I walked that route was likely in early 1979. I haven’t walked this path for decades, yet it is steeped with more personal history and memories than it seems possible to convey.

Back in “my day,” we didn’t have those bright orange flags positioned at the crosswalks to capture the attention of drivers otherwise distracted by their devices. The only TikTok that took your mind off the road was the sound of the spring-powered analog watch on your wrist, and ‘streaming’ was a reference to fly fishing in Montana. Nobody had to worry about someone behind the wheel of a moving vehicle paying attention to anything other than turn signals that didn’t auto-stop after completing a lane change. Frankly, I don’t know that there was some statistically driven spike in incidents creating a genuine need for introducing these hand-flag kiosks. Instead, I suspect it was another case of a solution in search of a problem being solved by a self-indulgent Karen. Come to think of it, who ‘walks’ to school anymore, anyway? The default mode of children getting from home to school and back again, to protect them from fresh air, sunlight and exercise, is the twice-daily 23-minute minivan caravan parading through every neighborhood within a half mile of every school. (I know… I’m officially the old man standing on his porch, shaking his fist and shouting, “Get off my lawn!”)

But, I digress.

Speaking of half-miles, my friend Matt‘s house was exactly half a mile from our front door. As I walked past that same home today, I felt an instinctively unconscious reflex to veer right at the driveway and approach the front door. (OK, who am I kidding with the driveway? I’d typically cut across the front lawn and through the slight gap in the hedge by the garage. I’ll admit it now. The statute of limitations has passed. I can’t be held responsible for any damage done. Plus, nobody was ever standing on the porch ready to shake their fist and yell at me for doing so.)

We would continue the walk from there, for the first two years, towards Hyde Jr High, navigating down Pineville to turn right on La Mar, left on East Estates, and then traverse the makeshift path adjacent to Calabasas Creek. The same creek that ran directly behind my parent's house on Farallone. At the time, as much as I wanted to do so, getting from my house to school by traveling that creek alone wasn’t possible without slinking along at a 45º angle or plodding through a muddy creek bed. It wasn’t designed for public access. It was just a makeshift path along the ridge we’d walk to take the most direct route. That same path is now smoothly and widely paved and lit.

When transitioning from 8th grade to our freshman year in high school, the metaphorical ‘fork in the road’ met a literal one, passing the creek and traveling down Vicksburg Dr. instead. Walking there again this morning was a wonderful reminder of the many seemingly routine experiences that became treasured memories decades later. It’s where we developed and refined our mutual sense of rye, dry, absurdist humor. Where the comedy routines of Carlin, Martin, and Costello were parroted and practiced, musical interests were dissected and discussed, and the most popular schoolgirls were obsessed over and, thus, immortalized. This was all a period during which our voices both changed, and were found.

I walked past the house where I’d occasionally stop to pick a rose for Holly. When I did so, I’d take it to school and leave it in her locker as a surprise. This was always done with expedient stealth maneuvers, approaching and efficiently snapping and removing a single flower without being skewered by thorns or risking that the home occupant, potentially doing dishes at the kitchen window sink as the theft transpired, might glance up and shout at the perpetrator in flight. "Hey you kids…", etc.

In January of 2010, As a Christmas present a few weeks prior, I took my mom on a flight to Santa Monica for the day. We visited her childhood home and her nearby elementary and high schools. As we walked about, she shared recollections and remembrances of numerous moments that were the ’set and setting’ of her childhood many years prior. This morning, before taking her to a chemotherapy appointment, knowing that she has perhaps a year or so of her own life left, I found myself reminiscing similarly.

I walked on sentimentally hallowed ground with a grounded perspective on its significance. A perspective informed by heightened awareness. These “backdrops,” these “stages” upon which our lives play out, are as integral to the production as the feelings themselves. I walked that walk, intensely aware of my time spent there and the foundation those “coming of age” experiences created for me to build upon. While doing so, random kids walked or rode bikes past me, each having their own adventures, establishing their foundations, likely ignorant of the value their surroundings might hold for them in time.

If I glanced out the window of a home on this route and saw someone pausing to take a picture of an intersection street sign, I might assume that their last name was “La Mar" or that maybe they knew someone in a small midwestern town named “Pineville.” Or that maybe, just maybe, it brings to mind an infinite gratitude and present joy for the experiences and history it represents to them.

Old days, good times I remember
Fun days, filled with simple pleasure
Drive-in movies, comic books and blue jeans
Howdy Doody, baseball cards and birthdays
Take me back, to the world gone away
Memories seem like yesterday
 - “Old Days” : Chicago