With all due respect to my neighbor Jon Bon Jovi and his band, I found their song, Who Say's You Can't Go Home, ringing in my ears this weekend. Much like the lyrics to this ballad, I shot out of my hometown on the south shore of Long Island like a bullet when I was seventeen...just fresh out of high school and looking for adventure.
Arriving in the town of Freeport with my husband, a Jersey man through and through, I was very surprised that I could find my way around town. Like an elephant that never forgets, I was able to navigate the streets that I would walk or ride my bicycle home by. I found the house that my siblings and I grew up in without much confusion at all, and sitting in the car, looking at the little street now crammed with houses that weren't there in the time of my childhood, I mused as to how much smaller it looked. I noticed that the neighbors houses also appeared smaller. What amazed me most though, was the memories, a flood of memories that came rushing back to me.
Dragging my husband farther down memory lane, I navigated us via a path I must have walked hundreds, if not thousands of times to the Nautical Mile, an area of Freeport, full of restaurants on the Woodcleft canal in an area where the once famous Guy Lombardo used to live. We situated ourselves in Jeremy's Ale House for clams and beer where the warm humid air blew through the open bar and like it did so many years before sent my hair curling into rings of frizz and smoke.
This weekend was the 40th reunion for the Freeport High School classes of 72 and 73. I attended the Saturday night party at the Bayview Ave. fire house with my sister, who graduated a year behind me. A person with few expectations, I did not guess as to what or who I would see at this party. The hall was decorated in high school colors of red and black and some poor soul was dressed in a devil costume, hired to pose for pictures with the alumni as the school mascot. It was very hot inside and out this night and appropriate to the memories as 40 years ago most places in town, homes and schools were not air conditioned. A party can be all about the atmosphere when done properly for the occasion, but in this case, it was the guests, the alumni, the friends and neighbors, the "kids" we attended school with, all grown up now, who made the party. We could have met in a parking lot with someone playing songs on their ipod and it still would have been a great party. Everyone looked good....amazingly good! I expected to not recognize anyone, however, everyone looked wonderful and really quite young for being in their late 50's. Maybe it has something to do with growing up enveloped in sea air that preserved us so well? All I can say in the end is that it was a great party...so much fun and so worth the trek to the Island.
Leaving this post with two thoughts, the first, is that people who come from Long Island live on the Island, not in the Island...don't ever confuse that. The other is that like Mr. Bon Jovi sang, You can go home again, however, if you do so, go with an open mind and an open heart.
One last quick story...A man who I spent quite a bit of time with when I was in the 4th and 5th grades at Bayview Avenue School came specifically looking for me to tell me that he was sorry for pulling a prank that left me in tears. We were 9 or 10 years old, he had a disappearing ink pen and I was wearing a white dress...you can guess how the rest of that fiasco went. He needed to apologize for something that I did not remember at all, but it somehow weighed on his conscience. What I remembered about him was that he liked to walk around on the playground at school singing Beatle's tunes like I Want to Hold Your Hand and She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Everything I remembered of him was happy and upbeat. Seems that we can filter out the negative and keep with us those positive memories. You were forgiven way back in the 60's Carl...it neither hurt my feelings or left a long term psychological scar.
If you are given the opportunity, go home again...and try to find all of the happy memories! Freeport, you still rock like no other town!!
