Long Island Nostalgia

The other day I was driving around, running errands with the windows of my tres chic minivan rolled down, wind whipping my hair, itunes blaring - when I was caught off guard by Your Name Here (Sunrise Highway) by Straylight Run. As he sang the lyics "Go east on Sunrise Highway" I was unexpectedly clobbered by what can only be defined by the dictionary's second entry for the word nostalgia: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition. A sensation I feel obliged to attribute to the fact that I am my older brother's sister.

After an early morning dream about being a member of a surprise roller skating fried chicken delivery team whose most recent assignment was a school for children with Down Syndrome where there was a little boy who looked like a mash-up of my third son and my youngest brother, I was considering blogging about this very topic and had all but decided against it. Then I was pushed right back over the edge by a Facebook status that a friend from Long Island had joined a group for those who grew up on Long Island in the 60's and 70's. As I browsed through their memories of places I could vaguely recall as if through a Monet painted veil of fog, I felt an old familiar wave wash over me and decided not to abandon this post.

I have only been back to Long Island twice in the past 18 years, most recently, ten years ago for my mother's funeral. For fourteen years I have been doing the west coast swing, first college in Colorado and then ten years split between California and Arizona. After so many years of arid air and caustic tap water, I have of late been haunted by the little East Coast seaside village in which I grew up. I would attempt to exorcise this line of thought through writing if there were words to give shape to this phantom, but it is so distant and obscured I can't quite make it out and when I look directly at it, it disappears completely. It is a proper haunting.

There is something there, some story that with a little (maybe a lot) of hard work, eager pursuit, careful study, sketching and returning to add detail again and again could begin to reveal its form...but for now I will enjoy this siren's song from a distance, ignore her directions because I have a shower to take, kids to take to the park and a stack of the weekend's unattended dishes to wash.

For all you Long Islanders out there, leave a comment. Aw, what the heck leave a comment if you are from anywhere on the East Coast, or if you have enough good sense to wish you were!