Rays of golden sun splinter through the branches just above, the ground awash with shadow and not, and all around is soft green. The hose sprays as it’s gripped tighter, washing pointed blades as the sun peeks through. Droplets cling to the tips of the grass, trembling slightly before slipping down. The air has a presence about it; it smells of something freshly cut, something damp, something alive.
There is a particular kind of afternoon that presides solely in my memory of childhood, though perhaps it never belonged to childhood at all. Maybe it belonged to summer, a backyard, a house that no longer stands. A moment the hippocampus deemed too ordinary to keep. One day, though, the memory makes the trek from the temporal lobes, waltzing right into consciousness. The edges soften, the colors grow more vibrant, and the heat isn’t so scorching. A craving for an afternoon with no demands takes root, burrowing deep as the glowing memory plays again and again.
I don’t remember the sunburn I got after lying in those blades for so long, or the boredom that led me out there in the first place. There is no recollection of how I used to dread summer, how the heat made me itch, and how the dirt always smelled of manure after my dad finished gardening. The truth of reminiscing is that it doesn’t need to be true at all. These idealizations, spun from a sprout of honest recollections, transform into symbols of want. The yard represents a place without urgency, without obligation, without the unending awareness that everything is moving, and we have no choice but to be swept up with it.
How devastating it is to go with the tide, never quite sure of where it's taking us. The moments lived, they won’t come back. We wax on about simpler times, as though simplicity were something the world misplaced and is yet to be found. As though the yard had ever been exempt from the seasons, from the prickly weeds, from the dragging, unremarkable decay of things not ready to leave. Perhaps it wasn’t that the world was simpler, but the intimacy with which we knew it was. The yard ended at the fence. The day was over when the bedtime story was read, and the light switched off with a click. Nights were spent counting sheep, waiting for sun to cross through the blinds, for the day to begin anew. Beyond all of it waited a world, teeming with possibilities, the dread of the future not yet known.
To revisit the yard in adulthood is to step on crunched grass, brown and craggy. The old tree I used to lean against is even older, gnarled and knotted. The fence is broken, slats hanging off metal, a splinter guaranteed upon contact. The disappointment of change is heavy. We wish it would’ve waited. If the tree could've just held its branches like so, if the grass could’ve kept soft, maybe then the afternoon would've been safe, untouched. There is something almost insulting about finding a place with evidence of time, when all you wanted was to find it as it was. Maybe this is where longing begins to resemble entitlement: the belief that a thing that once brought us comfort owes us its permanence in return. We know the past cannot be recovered, and yet, we continue to negotiate with its emptiness. If only things could stay as they were. If only the world would stop its insistence on becoming something else. And in defiance of this change, the building of a new yard begins. If the world refuses to give back what it has taken, perhaps everything to come can be made to resemble what was.
The branches are placed just as they once were. The sun shines like so. The grass is soft yet again. Nothing grows beyond the bounds of what you remember. It is preserved perfectly, and utterly incapable of becoming anything else. You lay there, watching—eyes tracking the sky—but no wind rattles the limbs. No cloud crosses the blue. You creep over to the fence, the hinges no longer squeaking. Pushing it open, you venture forth, searching for the feeling this place once gave. You wander into the home of your childhood, back to the old bedroom with so many fond feelings. You ease down into the bed. Tangled in white sheets, like a python, they snake and wrap around your ankles. You try to ease out of their grip, but they twist tighter, and no longer do you search for sheep, but instead the fence they jump over, hoping to cling to it and pull yourself out.
We wanted the fence to hold strong. We wanted the world beyond to wait. And now, with nowhere left to turn within the borders we ourselves have drawn, we scramble. Punching at the walls, begging to be released, let us go back to the true beginning. It’s not fair, we scream. How could time do this to us? There is no recreation, no way to encapsulate all that we lost. Misery descends, and the future washes over, burying our grief under new waves of memory. All so the process can begin again.
The grass grew, the branches swayed, the seasons came and went without asking what I wanted from them. Somewhere in all that ordinary, unremarkable change was all I sought after. I still miss those afternoons. I have a sinking suspicion that I always will. Though what may come of a future if we only allow it to regurgitate the past? What instead may begin if we give it the freedom to surprise us? That is the challenging part: the unknowingness of it all. Anger doesn’t evade us just because our past does. The stripping of our former comforts leaves metaphorical gashes and wounds. They do say time heals all. Hopefully that's true.
Written by Mattie Johnson, Design: Thea Findlay