iLiza's eyes

I grew up listening to my neighbor play his drums. His house was diagonal from mine, and so my bedroom on weekend afternoons would be filled with a constant beat wafting through the window: a soundtrack for my life in my room. You can hear the drums from anywhere in the yard...actually, anywhere in the neighborhood. To me, the beat always sounds the same and it will go on for hours and hours.

Now that childhood is gone, it's nice to hear the same sounds in my neighborhood. The fountain in my backyard, the school buses leaving and coming daily, the little squeals of delight from the fresh lot of children galloping around our street, playing the same games we all used to play. And of course, the drums are there: the same beat as always, the same soundtrack in our lives.

When I hear the drums now, I feel as though nothing has changed. The drums mean that my neighbor is home from college, which means we're all home from college, which means we're still living back in time. At moments like this, I can close my eyes and everything feels as it used to be; perhaps the only thing that has changed is my own age, my own callousness. The children, my friends, are still playing games like "Around the House" or "Capture the Flag--" I can hear them--and that beat is still ticking away at our lives, taunting the day when we have to return to New York or State College or whereever our real world may be.

The older I've gotten, the more I've enjoyed coming home and the more thankful I am that there is such a home to come back to. It feels more and more like a respite, like I'm pushing the "Pause" button on life and sinking back to a place where the beat is strong and even and all-consuming: the drum, the pond, the children, the drum, the pond, the drum, the pond, the drum, the drum, the drum, the drum.....

It feels less and less real and lacks the pressure. Because when you're living in the past, you already know what the future's going to bring.

posted by iliza @ 12:54 PM