So, with all of the craziness of moving back to Jersey in the air, something’s been happening in my head lately. I’ve been awash in a flood of memories of my own childhood and then seeing Nicholas in my place. These come at all times of the day and night… during work, over breakfast & dinner, as dreams while I’m sleeping, and especially when I’m lying in bed beginning to fall asleep.

Most of these are memories I have of doing things with my dad as a kid. Things like practicing the violin in 3rd grade in my parents’ study; going to the Shop Rite in North Bergen with my dad where they had a snack bar and I could get a hot dog and orange drink (they sold Shop Rite teddy bears and trucks there too—craziness); biking circles around my dad at Hudson County Park; learning how to ride said bike on King Ave. (I crashed into a bush the first time I really got going); going to the 4-Star Diner in Union City after Sunday School.

I think about these events in my past and I think about Nicholas. I know a lot of the area has changed somewhat since I was a kid, but I know a lot of it hasn’t. Doing fly-overs in Google Maps is always wild, retracing routes I used to take to places and realizing how close things actually are to each other. For, as a kid, going around the block was like traveling to a different country. I found the intersection where I fell out of the car when I was five (yes) and saw what it might have looked like from the sky.

It’s great fun watching Nicholas have new experiences and trying to remember what that was like. We talked at my last CTL Staff meeting yesterday about what it must be like to have the imagination of a toddler. Do they see and can they feel the make-believe object they’re playing with that only exists in their mind’s eye? How can one achieve that glory as an adult without resorting to mind-altering substances?

I’m very interested to see how this all pans out when I get to watch him have experiences on the same turf (sort-of) that I had them on. Just so long as they’re his new experiences and not mine relived. That’s a tricky part of being a parent.