I went back to Mayberry this weekend.
I did not see Andy, Barney, Opie or even the beloved Aunt Bee.
I saw Lisa, Leslie, Chris, Sarah, Anna, Liz, Tim, Georgia, Ed, Stephanie, Stan the man, Carol, Liz, Scott and David. We ran/walked a 5 k in memory of our lost classmate, Susie. I saw her wonderful parents and her sisters.
For reunions or other related events we always gather in the town I will call the 'burg. It has become my co-ordinate 00. It is my Mayberry.
I always love going back to my Mayberry.
It recharges me.
It centers me.
It grows me.
I enjoy the drive down there. It is a moderately quiet 2 1/2-3 hour drive. I play eighties hits on the radio and pretend that I am cool and 22.
I anticipate the laughter I will have with a classmate over shared memories.
I probably smile the entire 150 miles.
These weekends are like three idioms in one for me. They are 1) a piece of cake, 2) selling like hotcakes and 3) icing on the cake.
Basically, for me, this semi-annual going “home” is like a sweet delicious processed carb. One that won't make me fat with weight, but burst at the seams with happiness and fulfillment.
I have heard a few past classmates who still live there lament that they “never left”. As if they just happened to stay. I disagree, they chose to live there, and they chose to live in a place where home and heart really do seem to be one and the same.
These good friends stayed and in my fortune they have kept the traditional 'burg the way it really is supposed to be...full of them! They should be proud and happy to have lived their lives there. They stayed at the foundation where I often long to be. They are grounded.
I tell them, truthfully, that I envy them. What bliss to stay in a place so warm and familiar. To “run into” each other and be at arm's length to another classmate.
That is over-simplifying their lives, but it's the idyllic way that I see living in that town. I know that they have had the good, the bad and the ugly that we all experience in a large city or a small town. But, somehow, life seems far more normal and nice there than in oft- icy Northern Virginia.
The 'burg is not at all like it was when I left it 27 years ago. NOT AT ALL.
My tact?
I just ignore that it's not the same and plan events at our past local haunts. For me, the “New Town” doesn't exist (okay, I was coerced to go there late Saturday night and to my chagrin, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.) But, it didn't have the feel of the Green Leaf, Sals or the Blue Rose.
I didn't want to see the town as it is now. I wanted the feeling I had when I was 13 or 18.
Everyone should take time out to get in touch with their inner teen (except of course, teenagers who are trying like hell to not be a teen). It is a gift that they can give themselves; one that most adults don't realize is such a powerful experience.
Driving home, exhausted, exulted and recharged, I heard the song Rumors by the Timex Social Club. 'Memba that song? Some words from that wonderfully wicked song are: “How do rumors get started, they're started by the jealous people and They get mad seein' somethin' they had and somebody else is holdin'.....Look at all these rumors surroundin' me every day I just need some time, some time to get away from From all these rumors, I can't take it no more ….Hear the one about Michael, some say he must be gay I try to argue, but they said if he was straight he wouldn't move that way......”
Perhaps my friends have lived wonderful and productive lives in a town sometimes full of hateful gossip and whisperings and maybe that was what was too difficult to deal with. Maybe the town felt too intrusive for those living there. I still come back to this ~ I would trade my (often) loneliness in NOVA for that intrusiveness many times...
I thought about everyone in my class and everyone from the 'burg that I knew. Any one of us may have been the center of some of those rumors over the last 27 years. Even those of us that moved away. No matter what the rumor, it didn't matter. I loved them all and loved being one of them.
I loved every quick moving moment I spent there with very special people. I guess it proves that in the end......
You can take the girl out of Mayberry, but you can't take the Mayberry out of the woman (I have become).
