Yeadon

Yesterday I went back to Yeadon, the town where I grew up. And it wasn’t in my dreams. I took Elizabeth to see my house, 850 Church Lane. I showed her the entrance to my father’s office, the windows of my bedroom, my parents’ room and my brother’s room, the alley behind our house. The big linden tree at the front of the house was gone but the metal post that once held my dad’s sign, Morton S. Beck, MD, was still there. The house looked lived in but tired. I was almost tempted to ring the bell and ask to go inside but didn’t. I knew it would just make me sad. I don’t need that right now.

My parents and my childhood seem very far away to me today. Being a widow--whatever the hell that word means--seems light years away from being a daughter and a sister, when I lived in a present that was protected and secured and the future seemed a bright silver road that could only bring more happiness and pleasure.