a child's opinion on city development
When we set off from my grandparent’s house, I wonder if I can remember the way, but once I’ve pedaled by the first house my mother ever lived in, the path immediately grabs hold of me again: through the oddly-angled intersection, past the garage painted with a VW bug, then a sharp right around the blind corner (bike bell clanging furiously) and a final maneuver through the staggered gate onto the main road. All that’s left is the final sprint until houses drop away to open fields that are smaller than they were last time I was here.
Lilly is riding ahead of me and it’s cold—my hands are chapped beneath my gloves—but then in the middle of the vibrant fields and glowing setting sun I see the familiar copse of trees and the temperature doesn’t matter. We turn onto the rutted track towards the ranch and I feel my heartbeat pulsing under the lumped earth.
Eventually the tangle of weeds and mud is too thick to bike any further so we dismount and walk through the wet grass. Everything is overgrown and smaller and falling apart more than I remember, and my aunt has moved most of the animals to her new farm, but in my mind’s eye it’s all the same: the flat spot where we pitched a tent when it was so hot that one summer, the same summer my baby sister spent a week naked and mysteriously covered in yogurt, the same summer we picked fat red currants until our fingers were stained crimson. I blink and I see us piled under awning, spending lazy days eating chips and willing our favorite europop songs to come on the radio. The fence post where the odious fly trap hung tilts slightly more askew, but it’s there. By the barn the grass holds the shape of a circle, either evidence of aliens or the old blue pool. The horses still come running, their rubbery lips flapping in anticipation of some sweet clover (then) or a bale of hay (now). When I say that here I’ll always be a child, I mean that this is the only patch of earth that has seen me in every stage of life.
Rumor has it that the city is reclaiming this piece of land, knocking down the farmhouse where my grandfather was born and cementing the fields in preparation for a highway that will ease congestion in town. And it’s true, traffic is bad. But when I say that here I’ll always be a child, I mean how important is traffic mitigation anyway?