Back To The Future

Last week, my dad emailed me an article about Al’s News, a place where he and I spent hours when I was growing up.  The article said that Al’s News was closing after over seventy years in business.  Monty and I decided to make one last trip to Al’s, so on Saturday, we drove to the city where we grew up.  We’ve been back many times since we left, but this time, we planned to see all of the places that had been so special to us when we lived there.

Our first stop was Al’s News.  When I was growing up, Dad and I would ride our bikes to the library, then ride a little farther downtown to Al’s.  To me, Al’s was a magical place.  They sold magazines, newspapers, a few books about local places, and postcards—it was a store filled with words.  Al’s smelled like popcorn, pipe tobacco, and magazine pages; I always thought that if words had a smell, it would be that perfect mix that was the essence of Al’s.  While Dad looked at magazines, I looked at the newspapers—“The New York Times,” “The Chicago Tribune,” “The Washington Post”—and marveled that they had traveled that very morning from those exotic places right to the shelves at Al’s.  I also liked looking at Al’s unique mix of postcards featuring quotes from famous writers—writers I would remember and then look up at the library.  Al’s introduced me to some of the greatest writers in the world.

In high school, Monty and I started riding our bikes to Al’s.  Monty looked at maps and atlases while I got lost in my world of words.  We continued to go there off and on for years until we moved away.  When we went back on Saturday, I was disappointed.  Al’s had changed.  The smell of words was gone—there was no popcorn, and all of the magazines and most of the newspapers were gone.  There were still turnstiles filled with postcards, though, and I bought a few as souvenirs before we left Al’s for the last time.  Standing outside Al’s, I had the strangest sensation—I could almost see Dad and me as we were all those years ago, locking up our bikes and walking inside.

After Al’s, Monty and I continued our journey into the past—we went to the library.  I’d practically grown up at the library, between all the hours I spent there with Dad, with my brother Adam, by myself, and with Monty.  Looking at the library, I could see us as clearly as I had outside of Al’s.  I could see Adam and me riding up on our bikes.  Dad and I synchronizing our watches in the library entrance so we could meet up later.  Monty and I studying for college exams.  Adam and I playing catch in the park outside the library.  Adam pitching a baseball straight into my forehead.  Every memory was so vivid: I could see Adam’s red dirt bike.  Dad’s hand next to mine as we checked out our library books.  Monty’s black backpack with the “MP” on it, ahead of me as we went up the library stairs to study.

Our next stop on our journey into the past was our first apartment.  On the way there, we drove past all the places I’d passed countless times on my bike—the house I wanted to live in someday because of its big windows and lilac bushes.  The place where I looked up and saw a hot air balloon, so close that I could hear the whoosh of its burner.  The curb that I swerved into on my bike, causing me to fall and break my arm.  And finally, the kitchen window of our first apartment.  I looked up at that window and saw us, just as I had at Al’s and the library—Monty and me, just kids, really, with our precious cat Ricky sitting in the window while we made spaghetti and danced, Monty twirling me around that tiny kitchen.  I saw us, so innocent and full of hope, so sure that we were immune to the pain of life because we loved each other and our life together so much.

And I started to cry.  I wanted to go back and freeze that moment.  I wanted to tell us to savor every second of the times that were so beautiful and so full of joy that they left us breathless.  I also wanted to warn us—to tell us that we were going to be faced with pain so excruciating and choices so difficult that they would nearly break us.  But of course I couldn’t.  And the pain of having those memories so close and yet so untouchable was nearly physical.

For the first time, I realized how much I’d been dwelling in the past, constantly thinking about what I should have done differently—what I almost did, what I didn’t do, what I could have done.  On Saturday, I had to face what I’d always known but didn’t want to accept: the door to my past is closed as firmly as the door to Al’s soon will be.  I can’t go back.  I can’t ever live the beautiful moments again, and I can’t erase the painful ones.  I can’t change the choices I made that led to disaster.  I can’t fix it—so there’s no point in fixating on it.  Monty reminded me of what I can do: I can finally lay the past to rest and use its lessons to chart my future.  I will always carry our past in my heart, but I realize that I can’t dwell on it anymore.  Whatever choices I made or didn’t make brought me here: to our life in this town with our boys.  To working for our family business.  To writing.  To spending hours with my parents and reestablishing a friendship with my brother.  And that’s everything I dreamed of as a starry-eyed little girl—life as a writer, with cats and family and a man like Monty to make it all worthwhile.

As much as I loved Al’s News, it almost seems fitting that it’s closing—that chapter in my life is over.  I’m finally letting it go and moving on.  Al’s did give me one last parting gift on Saturday—one of the postcards I bought there summed up our journey into the past and directed me to the new chapter of my future.  So thank you, Al’s, for all the memories, and for this: