Starting Anew

I hugged him tightly, that best friend of mine, and said my good-byes. I didn't want to, I would have preferred not to, but the choice was my mother's and I was but a kid. Driving away for a long journey to a house I've never seen or slept in, I felt depressed. It was not the first time, I knew it would not be the last, but the entire process of forgetting everyone I know and trying to make new friends for tomorrow made me want to cry till dying of dehydration.1

It only took about ten minutes till we were out of Redding, California, moving up North to Weed, a trunk full of memories bound by new rope to keep it shut. How appropriate a metaphor. Hours went by like minutes and minutes went by like hours as we treaded North, yesterday behind us and tomorrow ahead. My brothers and I reminisced about the city we had left behind and dreaded each mile closer. There was nothing and no one we cared to welcome into our lives there, though secretly we were proud of our welfare-paid mother finally going to complete school to become a wonderful nurse. Still, the memories of those late night pizza parties to celebrate the end of the school year would never be beaten by anything this new 'hick-town' of Weed had to offer, or so we thought.2

In retrospect it was no different from the last time we moved. The names and circumstances were different, but the means were about the same. Nostalgia had cheated us again, shining rusted memories to a facade of silver and gold, so invaluable, so indulgent within themselves that we had forgotten the ash it'd left on our tongues like every time before. It would be the same again and again, every time we changed homes.3

We pulled into the small town roads of Weed, California, the familiar smell of putrid cow manurer tingling in our youthful noses. Within minutes, we found that brown, wooden house of a new home and pulled into the dark driveway. It was it, we were home. Soon to follow, the U-Haul moving truck pulled in behind us and we began to move boring brown box after boring brown box into the house. As the hours passed, the truck slowly became an empty box and our new house became a storage room. It began to turn late, far too late to unpack the memories. We undid the rope that bound our immediate needs in the trunk of our car and pulled out our pillows and blankets. We spent our first night home in Weed in a storage room of a house and it was saddening.4

Days began to pass and slowly our storage room began to look more homely. The last boxes were emptied and breakfast began to be breakfast again. I remember going into my room and being happy to call it my room. Slowly home became home with our frizzly curtains in the windows and pretty china in the cupboards of our kitchen. When school started, I found new friends to help me forget the old ones. I felt like I was home again.5

A year passed and I hugged my best friend, Cody, good-bye. A tear fell down my child face as I put the last of my belongings in the family Volkswagon again. We were going back to Redding, but I wanted to stay, even as nostalgic golden memories popped back into my mind of my best friends there. I was depressed, going to a house I had never slept in before in a big city of lost dreams and fragile memories. I would get there, I would meet friends, old and new and the old ones would not seem much different than before, and the cycle would complete, over and over again. Moving is just a part of life.6