Retrospect: the paths, case 0

Self-tutoring about childhood memories: the tutor shares….

I lived on a military base from ages six to ten, then moved off base to a farming village.

On the base, everyone rented, so no yards were fenced: “private property” didn’t exist within the civilian real estate. The military side was fenced, of course, with warnings posted that you couldn’t enter.

To a kid, though, the civilian side was free domain: you could cross any yard, for instance. I recall my quickest route to school involved cutting between two houses across the street, then taking a diagonal route across the southwest back lawn. Occasionally I would change the route, crossing between two different houses.

The small village I moved to from the base was immediately different: people’s yards were private. I became aware that you had to take the road somewhere rather than just cutting through yards. Yet, interestingly, a few yards had paths across them that everyone used.

One such lay alongside a road that exited a nearby village’s opposite side whence I lived. Its house was small; the yard was plainer and neater yard than most. Forward past it lay a perpendicular patch of woods people would traverse to a subdivision. The sidewalk, in another fifteen yards, would take you to the woods. Yet, a path veered from the sidewalk, curving through the yard to make a shortcut to the woods.

The path was well worn to bare earth through the dense surrounding lawn.

When I first started going to that area, a few miles away from where I lived, I’d met friends there and it was an exciting place to be. The house with the path was an important “last milestone” before I reached my friends, so I had good feelings about it.

As time went on, some of the friends moved, and some of the friendships went stale. I came to use the path less often, and its presence through the yard came to confound me. I stopped using the path even when I was there, opting to go the long way through the woods to the sidewalk.

I recall looking at that house a last time. A great tree stretched across its yard and over part of the path. From the sidewalk I looked under the branches across the yard; the house perhaps seemed melancholy. The path lay there, as clear as ever…I wonder if it remains today.