Currently listening to: Godsmack - "Faceless"
just got back from a weekend trip to washington dc. my mom called me friday afternoon while i was still in class, and two hours before we were supposed to leave and left me a message: "where are you?!? we're going to washington dc tonight. you don't have any plans, do you? come straight home from wherever you are! give me a call as soon as you can!!!"
saturday morning we somehow found our way to the fish market (where we used to go every weekend, according to the 'rents)on our way to the mall area. the ride was full of exclamations by my parents such as "this is where i'd wait to pick up your mom after work!", "my office was in the corner of that building!", "this is the road we'd come down every morning!", and my favorite: "I used to park at that exact meter all the time!". when we got to the mall, we took lots o pictures and went to the art museum and then the space museum. wish we could've stayed there longer, there's so much to see! of course, according to my dad again, he took me there all the time when I was younger, but i never appreciated it then. it'll be interesting to compare the pictures we took this weekend with the ones we have from years and years ago. For lunch, we went to chinatown, and the restaurant that my mom and her co-workers went to every week to eat steamed fish.
after lunch we headed to rockville and baltimore. talk about nostalgia! we went to our old house and took pictures. they painted the house white, but it was still pretty much the same. i think. the shed my dad built in the backyard and the deck were still there. i felt pretty silly, standing in someone's yard taking pictures of their house, but nobody was home, so i suppose it didn't matter. the house didn't quite match up with what i remembered it to be, but who can tell how much of a memory is true and how much is made up? when i think back to that house and that city, i don't think of it as a time or a place, but just a few events that happened, the only details of the house are derived from those specific instances. for instance, i only remembered the deck because i remembered a party my parents had, where all the men helped my dad to finish the deck, and all us kids running around and screaming. I remember the layout of the basement because my mom locked me up in the laundry room down there in the dark and i was afraid the rats would eat me alive. i remember my bedroom because i sprained my ankle once while jumping off the top bunk onto a pile of pillows (apparently they weren't enough). i guess all these memories constitute my house, and my whole maryland existence. it seems odd that they're just fuzzy fragments. seems like it should be a continuum of time, since that's what it was in reality. but, again, memory is not reality.
everything is smaller than i remembered it. i don't know why this was so shocking to me, cuz i've obviously grown a lot. the most significant thing i remember about glenda's house was that their staircase was huge. their staircase was right inside of the front door, and it would always loom over me when i came into the house. when i stepped in their house for the first time in ten years, the only thing i could think was that their staircase shrunk. i was actually dismayed. i wonder what else my memory or my age has distorted...
we drove to UMBC, my parents' alma mater. we saw the buildings they had class in, the parking lot where they practiced driving, the court they played basketball in, and the dorms they couldn't afford to live in. and afterwards, the apartments that they lived in instead.
afterwards we went to downtown baltimore. we passed the grocery store we used to go to every week, and then the hospital i was born in. we walked along the harbor a bit and then went home. i had forgotten how wonderful the harbor is. on one side is the bay, and the other side is shops and restaurants. it was a bit crowded, but would make a great place to people watch. didn't go to my beloved aquarium cuz it was too late :( and, by my mom's estimation, i'd already been there at least 106 times. well one more wouldn't hurt!
the east coast is so much greener and more colorful than the midwest! their grass was a healthy, satisfying, lush green, and trees everywhere were in full bloom. there were so many colors on their trees-red, purple, pink, green, white blossoms everywhere. back here, everything is still gray and brown, still recovering from a winter that doesn't quite want to leave.
sunday. the museum of natural history is a great place :) my parents had a hard time dragging us away from the bug displays :) which was why we were almost late to lunch at phillip's seafood buffet where we met john and his family. food was alright, ate too much, as expected. it's disturbing how people grow and change throughout the years, and when you're reunited with them, it's like meeting new people that you have to get reaquainted with. after lunch, it was off to the airport and back home. ugh. i've always hated going home. especially with my parents, who are always grumpy after trips. and when we're home, there's no reason to at least pretend to be happy any more.
there actually seems to be more color now in my memories, it's like i copy-pasted the green grass i saw yesterday into my head where the old memory used to be. and try as i might, i can't go back to the old memory. memories change so easily...they fade, come back to life and contort; and are never quite the same from year to year.
