You Sing an Old Song

I sat on the wooden stairs for a solid five minutes, peering through the vertical bars of the railing that reached to the ceiling. These were the bars my brother taught me how to squeeze and climb through not too long after I learned to walk. These were the stairs I tripped on when I was five, knocking out two of my front teeth on the unforgiving metal casing adorning the top step. As I gazed out at the stripped-bare basement it finally began to truly hit me, this was not my home anymore. We'd technically moved out two weeks prior, but it still felt like a temporary stay, like a vacation. There was about a month's grace period between our departure and the move in date of the next residents, and our family had gone back on this particular Saturday afternoon to pick up some of the last boxes we'd left there. My visiting aunt came with us, and, somewhat ironically, this was the first time she'd ever seen the house that my parents had lived in for seventeen years; she would never get the chance to see it in its full hospitality. As I sat there though, coming to fully realize that this would be one of the last times I ever set foot in the only home I'd ever known, I began to panic. Why couldn't I have had this epiphany earlier? I was convinced I was going to forget everything about this house that embodied an entire childhood's worth of memories because I hadn't tried to safeguard them in my mind. So, I sat there and stared at the first thing I saw, and decided, if I remembered nothing else, I would always remember this, I will remember this. This target of my all my focus and energies was a gray electrical hatch embedded in the faux-wood paneling and covered in rust splotches, one of the few distinctive features left in this room emptied of material objects, though certainly not feeling. On that day more than six years ago I stared, and continued staring, until finally my dad called me from the kitchen, urging me to get a move-on, though how substantial a "move-on" he requested he will likely never know. And here I am, a third of my life later, tearing up as I think about that insignificant little gray panel.

I suppose you could say I'm an old fashioned guy. I have this glamorized vision of all the traditions and morays of yesteryear and an especial attachment and fondness for almost everything from my personal past. I've always loved to inspect real artifacts from days gone by, but when I was younger I don't think I appreciated the true value of places like museums; I didn't fully appreciate that the things I was seeing and touching had been used by real people from an era past. They weren't just replicas or toys representative of some interesting narrative we call history, but rather a physical piece of evidence or link to an actual person's life. Once that finally dawned on me I became exponentially more fascinated with these locales. In short, I'm a glutton for nostalgia.

I like to live vicariously through my previous self. That sounds unhealthy, and it probably is in excess, but if there isn't a place for fond rememberance in this world then I guess I'll have to move (again). I take great joy out of reliving previous experiences, remembering those times that define who I am, who we are, and recalling those moments of true bliss. A lot of the most special moments in a person's life can't be recreated, however hard some may try (The reason most sequels fail to live up to the original), but they can be reflected upon. Most of all though, I don't want to lose any of the knowledge gained or of the things done or experienced to a cold oblivion. I want to tell people who I was and about those I knew, and what better way to help people understand than by individual anecdotes. For a distinct lack of these is what makes history just a distant picture book to so many. Stories become legends, people become icons, they lose their humanity and a great deal of their signifcance in relating to the fifth grader in social studies class or the soccer mom at the art gallery. I don't believe I've just fallen into some fad of obtaining and flaunting stuff that's supposedly vintage or retro, though I do think my penchant for such items is related to the reasons such a trend came into being in the first place; that being simply a recognition of the beauty of things from the past instead of a constant desire for the new or the now. I pretty much want to write down every memory I can think of so I don't forget any of them. If not for the sheer impossibility of engaging such a task I would do so. I might have to start writing a journal. After all, the written word is the photo album of the mind. I'm striving to preserve whatever knowledge I may possess to both enjoy the present and learn from in order to improve my future.

For example, I loved how I felt as if I was perpetually stuck in 1989 while I was at Kellogg, like I had a real connection and feeling for the experiences the students at that time had, for what I imagined life at the school to be like for my junior-high neighbors Matt and Llana and their Beavis loving peers when I was but a wee lad. For years Kellogg had been this distant, mysterious, and imposing building down the hill, the only second hand knowledge of which I'd acquired before kindergarten from those aformentioned neighbors, who moved away soon after. Six years of elementary school was a long time, sometimes I truly didn't think it would end. Even after my brother finally began going there more than four years later I never really went inside the building myself much. The cool thing was though, once I finally began attending school there, my vision of this preserved building from a decade before largely came true. Locker rooms with old school track records, old posters with Jesse "The Body" Ventura in the gymnastics area, the same ones that adorned the walls when I went there with my dad to my brother's gynmnastics practice when I was four with my Fern Gully coloring book, and old equipment like the spring board. The Phy Ed. uniforms. The old swim suits. The industrial tech room. The orange band lockers. The sweet paper and pencil vending machines. The videos of students from the early mid 90's that teachers showed us in Spanish or Phy ed. Almost all the videos we watched in FACS and especially the time capsule from the students of 1990 we opened filled with teenage mutant ninja turtles memorabilia. We also had to try and remember our earliest memory in FACS class, adding to these nostalgic associations. Not to mention in sixth grade alone everyone in my class had to do two separate projects on their personal history and memories, the entire year in geography was all about our state, county, and city history (which I found fascinating), and to top it all off we went on a field trip to a freaking roller rink. I also loved how it had so many cool features never seen in elementary school, a pool, an auditorium, science equipment, ovens, those same locker rooms, a track, ala carte lunches, dances, foriegn languages, once again the gynmnastics room and the industrial tech labs, real lockers with combinations, secret back passages/stairwells, multiple levels including a basement, a jazz band, elevators, musicals, a geography bee, a TV show, sewing machines, sports teams, academic teams, a room on the roof, the list goes on. It was as if this entire new world had opened up, further building upon the mystique of the building I'd only imagined for so long. Kellogg offered a two week summer program for incoming sixth graders called "Prep school" to help students get adjusted to the new environment. I took part in the program at my mom's urging and it truly did help me get a little more used to the idea of attending school there and learning the layout of the building. I'm glad I took the course too becase on the first day of the school year in the fall, I was overwhelmed with emotion as I entered the hallowed ground of the lobby. I was shaking and very nervous and felt a little like crying, but managed to safely stifle that feeling, as I became caught up in the fact that I was truly done with the safe haven of elementary school. A few minutes after class started a fairly awkward looking boy walked in with his parents, trying to stifle sobs in his mom's stomach. This was Robert and when I saw him I totally empathized with him, feeling reassured that I wasn't the only one feeling out of place in this physically and temporally alien environment.

This year I became a tutor for my dorm's on-site tutoring program. People don't come in all that often though and getting bored, I found myself one day beginning to rummage through the filing cabinet in the corner of the room. It turns out they haven't cleaned house in a while. It was a gold mine of preserved University literature from the early 90's. There were course listings and guides, study abroad packets, study tips, and a plethora of how-to manuals including one explaining what e-mail was. It was brilliant. I leafed through my treasure trove for the rest of the shift. It was really cool getting a feel for how drastically different college life was here just fifteen or so years ago, a change that occurred within my own liftetime. It gave me a totally unique insight into Unversity life at that time that even first person accounts couldn't totally do justice to. It's so hard to imagine how even six or seven years ago I may not have had a computer up here, wouldn't even be writing this post. My life is so entrenched in the use of this machine and so recently the average college experience was so fundamentally different. That cabinet gave me the exact same type of feeling I had whenever I was in Kellogg, a sense of connection with people I'd never met, as well as a paradigm shift in the way I began to look at my whole daily routine. Then I extended my thoughts further. It led to all sorts of cool realizations about just how storied this whole institution is. For most people, such as myself, their college isn't a place they grow up around like their high school or junior high was, it's not a part of the community they've been raised in, ingrained in their personal heritage. So, when they come finally come to college, they often have very little sense of the institution's legacy, and it's not as if a history of the place is a required freshman intro course. If one cares to look though, they may be surprised and a little fascinated. Walking around campus, I began to realize that the older buildings on campus are artifacts in themselves. The classrooms I attend class in have housed entire classes of people now dead and gone, as far back at the 1800's. The very room I'm sitting in now, my personal space, the place I consider my home away from home, has been the home to dozens of others from all walks of life, who knows, it may very well have even housed local alum Bob Dylan.
Similarly, last summer as we left Owen's house one night, Tom and Will and I began exploring the unfinished house next door. There were no walls but the frames to all the rooms had already been put up. We ran and jumped from floor to floor, joking around, before we had another realization: a family is going to live here, they will call this place home. And yet, here we were, making memories in this space that would become their private domain in a few months time without knowledge of our ever-being there. It's strange and enlightening to think about.

The week after I spent my Saturday sitting on the stairs of my childhood home, I went back one final time. I was on the way back from church youth group with my dad, and this would be the last time any of us would ever enter the place while it was still our own. A few years before, I was in fourth grade I think, Nathan had won a pack of football cards in Sunday school and, uninterested in his booty, he gave them to me. Fooling around one day in the upstairs hallway I dropped one of the cards, one featuring a Minnesota Viking (the name of whom I forget) at that, behind the baseboard at the foot of the wall, quickly panicking as I realized I couldn't get it back. It had lain there for years and on this night I was determined to reclaim it. I had brought a butter knife with me in my pocket, thinking I would be able to dig it out with such a tool. I gave it a go, but to no avail. The knife barely fit and I wasn't even sure exactly where the card was anymore. As I gave up though, I began to look at the situation from a different perspective. Sometime down the road, when the wallpaper in that hallway is finally replaced and the paneling stripped off, someone will find that card, and just think how neat that will be for them; I know I'd find it pretty interesting. Much like those brochures I found in the tutoring room, I would be leaving behind a legacy in that house, a physical memento to the time I spent there that some total stranger will discover years later. I'm glad I was unable to dislodge the card. As we left the house for the last time my dad and I came across a strange sight. A large sheet of frozen snow was sticking straight upright in the front yard. It was so distinctive my dad and I brought it home and put it in the freezer to preserve for a little while and show our family, taking one last memento with us as I left my own mark behind in the upstairs hall.