Ghosts

Do you ever pass yourself on the road? Driving down a street you use almost every day and suddenly you remember that time you went for a walk and how you felt when you passed this very spot...but then you are done stopping at the stop sign, you speed up and leave your former self in the mists of a moist July evening. That was me last Tuesday night as I drove home late from my parents house.
As I approach the date set for leaving my home, family, pet, apartment and all that is familiar behind me these times seem to be more frequent. Driving through Falls Church last week I passed the lot where the Red Lobster once stood, but I couldn't even pick out which lot it should have been - that whole side of the road is now solid condos. We used to eat at that Red Lobster after church occasionally. We took my grandparents there once or twice. Up a little further on the road I passed the library that mom always took us to as children to research our school papers. Then there was that shopping center that used to have a video rental place. There were jelly beans on the counter that I used to munch while mom checked out. And the restaurant where I went with my first boyfriend the first time he visited my parents on Memorial day 2001.
I shook my head and turned on Annandale Road, passing a town house where a friend used to live...she's in New York now I think. There's no use dwelling on it. I remembered a Christian bookstore called The Gathering Place that had been another friend's first job. It's a Weight Watchers now. Such is life. I have lived in Northern Viriginia for all of my life - except the three years of college. I have seen many people and places come and go. The rhythm of life in the DC suburbs is change. Some people call it development, but as I pass the places where I laughed and learned as a child and see them changed beyond recognition there is a certain sadness in my heart. Nothing endures but change. I'm glad to be going. My "hometown" will continue its never ending evolution, and some day I will bring my children here to see where I grew up. The house will be twice as big - or gone. The streets around will be filled with more buildings and fewer trees, but at least the roads will not change.
I am glad to be leaving, heading to a new place to make new memories and a little more headway into who I am and who I am called to be. But these memories will live on in the church and the library, the park and the neighborhood - those places where I grew up, and every time I visit them I will see the ghost of my former self singing in the children's choir, exploring the books, hiding among the trees or walking the dog with my sister. I will see myself, frozen in time, surrounded by the places as I remember them - not as they are.