Gulf Freeway

We're hanging out in Houston this week. "We" in this instance meaning myself and a friend/colleague. (Perhaps I should call her "Commuter Friend" for the purposes of this post?) Specifically, we're here gathering information for a project that CF has created. It is her project, but my center is the beneficiary of the work. Ergo, we're here in Houston to learn.

I spent my childhood in Houston. I've been back a few times, but my family has settled in points north and east of my childhood neighborhood so it's not a place I've seen in 30-some years. If you're not familiar with Houston, Texas, it is a city made of sprawl. It is possible to set out from the far east side of town, drive slightly above the speed limit in a straight line toward the west and an hour later still be in urbania.

Our travels this week have taken us about 10 minutes south of where I grew up. I knew from the map that we'd be heading this way and I considered it with a mild bit of curiosity. I googled my previous address to peek at the house (it's still the same), and the elementary school I attended (still there). It was fun, being able to do that, enjoying the quick trip down memory lane. It was also fun seeing street names long-forgotten but that I still know how to pronounce (Fuqua, anyone?).

I found the ownership records of the house and discovered that when we moved away, my mother had sold it to our then-next-door neighbor. I hadn't thought about those people in a couple dozen years but with grown-up, retrospective eyes it makes sense that they would've bought it just to get us out of town (short version: in South Texas in the 1970's, divorced women were highly suspect). We haven't driven through there yet; I'm sort of thinking about doing that today some time. What we have driven past, however, is the mall.

I'm not given to waxing poetic about malls. They serve their purposes, but there are places I'd rather spend my free time.

However. Last night, CF and I met our Texas colleagues for dinner at a Tex-Mex place in a strip mall next to the "real" mall, and our route took us past the mall. As we were heading that way, I remembered another of those half-forgotten moments--4th grade, Bugsy Malone, and my first-ever 'date' with a boy named Jeff. His mother dropped us off and we watched the movie in the frozen, silent fear of the opposite sex that is unique to elementary-aged kids. I don't remember much about what happened after that and I'm largely okay with this. That memory alone was a kind of unexpected gift, a reminder of a golden moment in a mostly-forgotten childhood.