Hometown Christmas Musing by K. Irene Stone

  I was picking up gifts today in downtown Uvalde and took a old alley to avoid the busy city streets. I couldn’t help but drive slowly behind the gracious old homes, peering into their lovely backyards. Pulled out onto North High Street, and, as I looked north down the long treelined street, embellished with the Santa, snowmen, and reindeer of the Season, I immediately felt my heart wrench. Tears begin to roll down my cheeks.

There before me, the very scene of my childhood unfolded — the same Christmas spirit that I felt when mom steered our car up and down High Street year after year during the holidays. We would head north to our snug home on Mueller Street or south to Getty Street Church of Christ for worship or east to my grandparents, the Carlisle’s, on East Mesquite where warm sugar cookies waited.

  How can so many years go by, and I still feel the same I asked myself as I wipe more tears and my makeup away. I go up and down this road often since moving back to the Uvalde area, but somehow when I came out of that old alley today, the view … the memories! … flooded back. They became overpowering! For a moment I was 12 years old , my parents and grandparents were alive — even my great-grandma was still here!

  I gave up on trying to stop the crying. Instead,I drove “past” my turn, lost in a memory that, sadly, slowly began to fade until I found myself on the familiar road of “now.” I was alone … again.

They say you can’t go home again. Not true. Sometimes there’s no home to go back to bc it’s been in your heart all along.

You just didn’t know it.