A Homecoming

There are parts of memory which the common mind imagines to be immutable. In the heedless confidence of childhood we persuade ourselves that certain streets, certain houses, possess a permanence beyond the frailty of mankind itself. The worn pavements become as eternal as the course of rivers; the familiar dwellings rise with the solemnity of ancient temples; and every neglected corner harbors mysteries known only to those who first awakened to consciousness beneath its quiet dominion. We depart, believing that the years shall halt respectfully until our return.

After the lapse of many years, circumstances, whose trivial nature I need not relate, compelled me to revisit the neighborhood where I had grown up. Scarcely had I crossed the threshold separating memory from reality when there descended upon me a sensation so profound that I hesitate even now to entrust it to paper.

It was utter silence.

Not the gentle silence which attends the earliest dawn, nor the quiet which descends upon the earth beneath a mantle of winter snow, but an unnatural vacancy, as though sound itself had recoiled in dread from a place no longer wholly surrendered to the dominion of living men. It seemed less the absence of voices than the lingering aftermath of voices long extinguished, whose echoes had withdrawn into an inaccessible gulf beyond the reach of mortal men.

The old mercantile establishment still confronted the street, though in a condition so lamentable that I scarcely recognized it. Its once cheerful sign had become a faded hieroglyph whose colors had yielded to the merciless attrition of countless seasons. The windows, fractured into geometries, reflected the heavens like fragments of some forgotten universe. In those days I had crossed that threshold with pockets heavy from childhood fortune, exchanging wealth for sweet confections while the kindly proprietor greeted every youth by name. The air had forever been fragrant with bread newly drawn from the oven, fresh oranges, and the peculiar odor of newspapers whose ink still retained the warmth of the press.

Now only dust wandered where humanity had once seemed so vibrant.

Proceeding farther, I encountered the remains of the schoolhouse wherein the first disciplines of civilized existence had been impressed upon me. Creepers and ivy, advancing with an almost sentient deliberation, which had enveloped the weathered masonry as though some vegetation sought patiently to erase mankind's brief intrusion upon the earth. Their tendrils insinuated themselves through shattered windows and across collapsed roofs with the stealth of an organism reclaiming its territory. The playground, once vibrant with the exultant cries of children, lay overwhelmed beneath growths whose unnatural height concealed the rusted apparatus of forgotten joy. From the skeletal remains of the swings hung chains, stirring faintly in the wind like pendulums. Measuring not the hours but the slow dissolution of entire generations.

At length I reached the house which memory had preserved with peculiar fidelity.

Its diminished proportions struck me at once with an almost painful force, for childhood magnifies all earthly dimensions beyond their true measure. Yet, though smaller than I had remembered, it possessed an age exceeding anything I had conceived. The porch sagged beneath the accumulated burden of decades; the paint had curled away in strips; the weather-beaten shutters clung to rusted hinges, uttering intermittent taps whenever the wind passed among them.

No curtain softened the vacant windows.

They gazed outward with a fixed and intolerable emptiness, like the sightless orbs of some colossal entity whose spirit had departed ages before.

Yet even as I regarded the structure, visions of my childhood began to flood my mind. Before the front window my mother stooped over blossoms whose colors no spring could now restore. My father labored patiently at the fence while the afternoon sunlight gathered upon his shoulders. Bicycles lay abandoned upon the grass as children vanished into adventures requiring neither machinery nor explanation. During tranquil evenings neighbors conversed across adjoining porches while fireflies traced constellations through the gathering twilight.

Every figure within that vision belonged to the dominion of the past. Some had departed decades prior. Some had surrendered to the slow indignities of age. Only the deserted houses endured, maintaining their silent vigil.

At the end of the street stood a church, whose steeple pierced the heavens with an attitude less of triumph than of weary resignation. It leaned as though exhausted beneath the burden of centuries before it. The stained glass had long since yielded to weather and storm; rain entered freely now, baptizing abandoned pews where generations had celebrated unions, mourned the departed, and sung hymns whose echoes lay imprisoned among the shadowy rafters.

For places utterly forsaken do not surrender their memories without resistance. Nature had wrought no vengeance. She had merely resumed an inheritance whose alienation had always been temporary.

As evening descended, a final radiance spilled across the abandoned dwellings with a certain softness. For one instance the old neighborhood assumed the beauty of its past self. Houses sprang to life. The laughter of children filled the air. The streets glowed with radiance and vitality. As if the inhabitants from decades gone had never departed. Perhaps they never had. Perhaps they still exist in some form. As wandering spirits or just a memory waiting for our return.

Then, as quickly as it came, the light withdrew. The vision of my small town had left me. The shadows deepened until the light had all but disappeared. Everything returned to its current state. Decay and ruin.

I turned at last and departed, leaving those streets to whatever unseen inhabitants now claimed them. Yet, I carried away a conviction from which I shall never afterward be free: that there exist places which do not perish, but merely withdraw beyond the circumference of mortal perception. Their outward forms crumble into dust, their names vanish, and forests slowly consume the last vestiges of their existence; yet somewhere beyond the architecture of memory they endure unchanged, awaiting those who stray too near the forgotten frontiers where the living world ends and memory begins.