I use to be from here

  

Recently I visited my boyhood home town of Roseville, California.  Nestled in the foothills of the Northern Sierra Mountains it was a great place to grow up. At the time of my youth, it was a fledgling stop on Interstate 80 for those driving east from the San Francisco Bay area. They were on their way to go skiing or gamble at the Casino’s in either Lake Tahoe or Reno.

  The town grew, as all towns in ideal locations do. Being on the outskirts of the capital, it was inevitable that Sacramento would eventually blend into Roseville through a series of smaller towns swelling with additional housing developments.  I left Roseville nearly forty years ago and have only recently begun to return to assist with my aging parents.

  Every visit I’m amazed at the raw truth of my no longer being able to navigate the area very successfully.  Never mind the new shops and business’ I am told to fetch needful things from; that’s reasonable to need directing to. But the real kicker is these new businesses are on new roads that had been in my recognition just fields for sheep to graze.  Lead Hill? Where the heck is that? 

  It happened again; I got lost.  I thought I knew how to navigate the new streets towards familiar locations; I was wrong. Once more I’m faced with trolling until I see a road sign I recognize “Oh Taylor, OK, now I know where I am” yet, most often I have to stop at a gas station and wear my tourist mantle saying

   “I’m not from here, how do you get to my mommy’s? ..er…the Galleria, yeah, there.” 

  Each time there’s a pinch of embarrassment.  Shouldn’t I know my home town?  I use to chide myself for this new grown-up-getting-feeble process of memory impairment; this before I’m sixty no less?  Inferior genes I suppose. Le Sigh.

  On the shuttle taking me from the airport to Roseville, I shared the ride with others who live there.  We struck up a conversation and I mentioned my getting lost every time I come back for a visit.  The woman sitting next to me told me to not feel so bad, she moved there back in 2005 and still gets lost.

She was right of course, get your act together lady, this should have been resolved for you in seven friggin years. (compassionate aren’t I?)  I can’t fault myself for forgetting the main roads when others have taken their place.  I pointed out how much of the real was just empty when I was a boy.  Internally it made me chuckle because, isn’t that always the case with

change?  New replacing the old I mean.  Don’t agree?  Look into the eyes of a toddler and I’d bet you see a glimmer of something of someone you once held dear.  There seems to always be a bit of the old in the shimmer of the new.

  Maybe that’s the sentimental me.  Maybe it is a case of my practiced becoming a lost-wandering-old-fart.  If it’s the case, I’m here to report

I’m making great progress.