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| My office desk for 20 years |
As I drove through the streets,
it seemed like time stood still. A few stores were shuttered or demolished and
new restaurants built. Some very wealthy local families who owned prime commercial
real estate have controlled the building on the main thoroughfare, hwy. 45, for
such a long time, I did not think many national chains would ever be able to
come to an area where prime commercial land is not sold but leased, and those
leasing must build on land that is not theirs.
The roads appeared more decrepit,
pot holes rattled my rental car; the bad economy of the last seven years had
caught up with the tax base from the federal and state government that
maintained the city. My old street was empty, with a couple of “For sale”
signs, cheered by a balmy sunny day and chirping birds. Our old house, although
inhabited, was overwhelmed by weeds and kudzu. Long gone were my beautiful
flowers, my rose bushes, azaleas, and well-manicured lawn. Renters never take
good care of someone else’s property. I can still hear the laughter of my girls
running up and down the stairs, playing outside, building their first and only
snowman, and riding bikes up and down the steep incline.
Located not far from our house,
the university campus was deserted, save for the gate guard who waved me on
through with a smile. The trees that escaped the frequent tornadoes were in
full bloom, shading the ground with luscious and vibrant green leaves. For twenty years I made the five minute drive
from home to this bastion of academic liberalism. It was a job that kept my
family fed and sheltered. After a while, the feelings of alienation and
loneliness subsided, replaced by my life-long curiosity and love of discovery
which I imparted to my eager-to-learn students.
As a conservative who loathed
liberalism, my students made life at work a lot more bearable. I never adjusted
to the asinine weekly and very wasteful meetings during which times, the
favorite liberals of the administration heard themselves talk nonsense for an
average of one hour every week. I tried to make mental notes of the meetings
that could have been dispatched with a one-paragraph email. Then I made lesson
plans or graded papers.
It was hard to take these people
seriously who forced the faculty and students to listen to an imam extol the virtues
of Islam and of their respect for women. It was hard to ignore some of the
faculty who had serious drinking problems, serious psychological episodes, or
disturbing psychotic outbursts. The darling of academia was the teacher who pretended
to be sick, walking around with a cancer chemo pump for weeks at a time in
order to gain sympathy from the rest of her liberal cohorts.
I walked around the campus and
stopped at the water fountain where my husband proposed on a romantic evening. The soothing water waves sparkled like a huge
aquamarine. A few cool droplets sprayed my face. I sat on the fountain’s edge
for a while, taking in the greenery and the gazebo where I sat reading often
between classes. Although dignified, it looked like it needed a fresh coat of
paint.
Perhaps it was the intense sun
but tears filled my eyes retracing memories of years past. This university that
stood for little that I believed in was my home away from home, taking me away
from my children, while I mentored someone else’s liberal children. The
resentment still aches in a corner of my heart.
Chef Fidel’s fragrant garden is
gone, replaced by carefully arranged, color-coded flowers. I left with a
feeling of relief, giving the huge magnolia on the corner one last look. It’s
the oldest tree on campus that survived the test of time and hurricanes. My
footsteps still echo in its generous shade where I often graded papers and day
dreamed after my walks with Maribel.
Driving down the street, I spied
my daughter’s old college days apartment building. Bogart walked a few times on
the window ledges, escaping her apartment and meowing to get attention and gain
access into someone else’s apartment through the closed windows.
On the corner of Main Street, a
restaurant was filled to capacity and laughter was spilling out the door.
Church goers in their colorful Sunday Easter best were lunching on Southern
fare while a local Jazz musician was entertaining them with his saxophone.
I remembered this building from
the early 1980s when it was the most elegant dress shop in town called Ruth’s
Department Store. The three stories catered to the most sophisticated ladies in
town and the basement dressed their babies. From furs, to shoes, to hats, fine
jewelry, purses, wedding dresses, and ballroom gowns, southern ladies were well
catered to and elegantly attired. A preacher’s wife, a Ruth’s frequent
customer, bought a new and flamboyant hat each week of the year. While shopping,
ladies sipped on sodas or champagne.
Mimi still remembers the horror
of riding up alone in the elevator to the third floor, frightened by the army
of mannequins when the doors opened. She never forgot the moment when the doors
closed too fast and I had to let go of her hand or else our arms would have gotten
crushed in the old style lift. It was so long ago but it seems like yesterday.
The streets are so empty that you
can hear the buzzing of bees. The welcoming silence is broken occasionally by a
passing car. I am far, far away from northern Virginia, an area suffocated by overcrowded
humanity. But I no longer belong here, I want to go home.
