"There's little we can say and even less than we can do, to stop the ice from getting thinner under me and you"

I rode my bike on one of our unusually warm days, down to the Village and winding through Mission Hills, up to my old grade school and down to Mom and Dad's house. I have lived in this city my entire life. Thirty-six years living in the same 10 mile radius. There isn't an inch of this town that I don't know, that isn't immersed in my history and branded in my memory. The city has changed over the years, but I can see it like it was when I was a child, and when my parents were young - my age. 

There was a red barn on Mission Road, next to St. Ann's, where those condos are now. When I was very little, they sold Christmas ornaments, and I can remember going in there with Mom and Dad and Steven, I was so young I couldn't reach the counter. Mom let me pick out an ornament, it was a little wooden girl with red yarn hair. She hangs on my tree now, her hair is coming undone.

The Village used to be all pastel and Spanish style. There was a burger place with the unfortunate name of 'Smaks' - I put a sticker from there on the inside door of my chifforobe, and it's still there today, in Addie's room, a testament to the unusual stickiness of all stickers made in the 1970's. There was the toy store that went out of business years back, and I can remember looking at all the Madame Alexander dolls up high on a shelf, and wanting one of those big baby dolls so desperately. My parents, despite an financial struggles they may have had that year, made sure that Baby Victoria was under the tree on the Christmas Eve in 1976. 

My old grade school hasn't changed too much, and that ride home made me feel like I was 8 years old again. I was - and still am - a square peg that just doesn't fit in the round hole of suburbia. School was not the best experience for me, and that route home meant comfort and a place where I was free to be my own quirky oddball self. I was always lucky to have a family that loved me unconditionally - let's face it, in a society where the emphasis is on appearance and achievements, true acceptance is in heartbreakingly short supply these days - and let me travel my own path in life. 

I have, for years, loved the comfort and familiarity of living here. Sometimes, lately, the memories are too hard. Everyplace reminds me of Dad, my youth, his strength and wit, our life together. There are nights where I lie in bed, unable to sleep, and I want to get in my car and just drive away. Go somewhere where nothing is familiar, where I don't know anyone. Where I can walk into a store or a coffee shop and no one greets me or knows my name. I lie there in the dark and imagine a different life, and what it might be like. I know I can't run away from this. The memories of what Dad used to be will follow me everywhere. 

No matter how fast I rode my bike, how hard I pedaled, I couldn't outrun it. Someday, the memories will be sweet, but for now.... there is just bitterness.

"We're not the same dear and it seems to me.
There's nowhere we can go with nothing underneath.
And it saddens me to say that we both know it's true.
The ice was getting thinner under me and you"