M and I were talking about our secret places the other night, and we were pondering on how it must be a universal experience . Secret places. Perhaps there is in your memory a place, a time, a state of you, or maybe all of them combined, that you treasure the most.
Maybe it’s that rusty swing in the playground of your elementary school and how the late afternoon sun fell on it. Or the smell of that one dish your mother so often cooked during your childhood days.
There are places in my childhood that I’ve never returned to - streets where we once biked, stumps of trees we’ve played around with, little sari-sari stores with local comics hanging on thin wires. Sometimes I find myself hoping to return to those streets and find them unchanged, exactly how I remember them to be.
All too familiar corridors and classrooms, with all the familiar faces running around during lunchbreaks.
Whatever it is, you find comfort in that memory and often times when you find yourself in a deep mess, you somehow try go there, in that one place or time in your memory where things have been good, you were carefree, time didn’t matter.
It’s your own Neverland, Narnia, Terabithia. And it really did exist once in your lifetime.
I wish there’s a way to share those secret places in our memories.
