The end results were the name I had been looking for and the discovery that the school is, at this very moment, being torn down and rebuilt.
This wasn’t a happy discovery.
I had a vague idea it was coming – the building, after all, was constructed in 1927 and has functioned with only minor upgrades and extensions ever since. It’s long been due for a transition to a “fully-equipped modern facility.” The last time I went back for a visit, there were rumors being tossed around of reconstruction. And I can’t even say that I expected to hear about it, since that last visit was over a year ago and it’s not as though I’m up to speed on events happening 3,000 miles away.
Still, stumbling across the news article felt unpleasantly like a slap to the face.
It’s doubly unpleasant because I’m starting to realize for the first time how little I actually remember of the first 10, 11, 12 years of my life. I do remember that I used to read about trying to recall childhood memories and finding them just out of reach and thinking, “that’s silly, it’s not hard to remember,” and, well. Look at me now.
I keep trying to recall the details of the heavy stone floors and the chipping varnish of the stair railings and the doors connecting various rooms to the library or the mural above the enormous slide right outside the kindergarten classroom, but for every thought that does come back, I know there are more that I’m losing, and more I’ll never find again. I can’t ever go back and walk around and think “oh yeah, this is where I hid when I didn’t want to go to recess, and this is where those spicy plants grew, and this is where I used to pretend I was a dragon until Stephanie told me to come down.”
And I’m 17. To a lot of the people who read this, I’m still very much a child, even though I’m looking back 10 years and wondering who on Earth I used to be. Where will I find myself in another 10 years? In 20? How little will be left to me then?
I keep feeling sorry for all the kids who are going to pass through the school once it’s done, who are never going to know what it’s like to finally be in the fifth-grade classrooms next to the lockers or where to find the best spot at the back of the library to read. Which is ridiculous, because all those kids are going to find entirely new spots and new experiences and if the thought ever occurred to them, they’d probably feel bad for me for not getting to see the things they saw.
Either way you look at it, some piece of the past is now irretrievably gone as part of a no doubt well-planned, well-budgeted, well-meant change. It isn’t coming back. It’s not the first irreversible loss in my life and it’s in no way going to be the last.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t still be sad about it.
— Nina Collay is a senior at Thornton Academy who can frequently be found listening to music and reading.
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