May 6: After a wonderful dinner Chez Norton, I found myself parked at the corner of Inglewood Drive and Heath Street East on the night of the full moon. At first, in the silvery light, it seemed that little had changed. The outline of things seemed to be pretty much as I remembered them. True, the canopy of maples tunneling down to St Clair was much thinner – those replacement Aspens just don’t do it. But the houses looked mostly the same.
After a while though, the changes were pretty obvious. A third floor has been added to our old house. This happened right after we sold it, so there was no surprise there. The house next door had been demolished and a more modern home rebuilt in its place. The place across the street was bigger too. The duplex on the corner was now a garish LED-lit renovation.
I grew up on that corner. It felt permanent; unchanging. My roots were there and some things were not supposed to change. It was our place to meet and hang out. We played touch football and street hockey when the weather was warm enough. We graduated from bicycles and skateboards to motorcycles, and then to cars. I met my first girlfriend there and fell in love for the first time. Others did too.
Looking at the moon and thinking back to those days I was struck by how innocent it all seems. We were hanging out and having fun. Life would be what it would be. We were at that age before reality intervenes and we learn hard lessons. Somehow, our lives felt anchored in that time and place and we would go forward in a predictable way. Time was infinite.
But of course, life doesn’t happen like that. Friends died. Others moved away. I dumped my first girlfriend for the most mundane of reasons: another girl. We finished school, got jobs, started families and did all those things that adults do. Most of “the gang” are retired now. At no time in that 50 year process did I ever foresee that I would be standing there looking at the full moon and wondering where the time went. What once seemed so limitless now seems alarmingly finite.
When we speak of the future, the Gods laugh.
Chinese Proverb