A Vault to The Roots

On July 3rd, I did the drive from Nashville to Allentown, a kind of pole vaulting maneuver in one day taking about 13 hours, over the rest of Tennessee, a lot of Virginia, a blip of Maryland and into Pennsylvania, all of it green and humid and full of life. 

The plan was to spend a few days at my brother's house in Allentown, where my parents also have an apartment that my brother built out in what used to be his office, then go to Manhattan and New Jersey to see my oldest brother and his side of the family and meet my grandniece and grandnephew for the first time, then go to my sister's house near the Delaware on the New York side of the PA/NY border. So, with the exception of meeting an old friend for lunch in Manhattan (as in, a man I have been friends with for 43 years), I was headed into a solid block of family time- 9 days of visits, about 24 people, and 55 years of personal history. 

The big shift this visit was that my parents, in their 80's, had moved out of the house they bought in 1967, where we all grew up, and moved into the apartment in my brother's house. This would be my first visit back to the Lehigh Valley without visiting the old childhood home. I find it impossible to even imagine what it would be like to live in the same house for 50 years, let alone what it would then be like to move. 

Me, standing with arm around girlfriend, with seated friend acting silly, on the front porch of the parental home, circa 1986. 

The brood with cat. I'm the baby. Loving my shoes and socks here. And bow tie. Easter finery.

I didn't arrive in Allentown until almost midnight. I stayed in an inexpensive room at a Sleep Inn. The weird thing was, I was only about 12 miles from Bethlehem, but didn't know the interchange where I exited at all. I'm not sure I had ever gotten off the highway there, in the 26 or so years I was attached to the area. So it had a curious feeling of visiting someplace new and undiscovered. A reminder for me to bring my present self into the whirlwind of family visits and not get sunk by tidal waves of memory and past feeling. A challenging meditation for sure. I was already feeling flooded up to my knees at least with echoes and reminders, and clusters of memories were flashing by. I wasn't sure what to expect or how I would feel about any of it. 

Gloriously green street in Allentown