...I don’t remember what else we did that day except take the kids down to the river. The house we had bought is very close to what is almost a cliff that overlooks the tracks that line the James. We went down to the river and coming back, ventured to the end of the dead-end road across from us. I had my daughter May-may in the backpack, where sits the oldest house in the neighborhood, a massive old brick colonial, vacant for years. We discovered old overgrown gardens in the woods just past the steel barricade where the road ends, and just below the house found a huge pit, lined with massive boulders with a center that almost looked to be excavated for some reason. It was a good twenty feet down. There was a small grotto of trees in the center and a narrow passage out at the very bottom. It was strange in the purest sense. It was as if we had stumbled onto an ancient ritual site. We decided it was too dangerous to climb down into it with May so we headed home. Coming out of there I realized my entire perspective of our little neighborhood had been altered. Everything I thought about where we lived seemed changed somehow.
I am writing this down so that I can remember it, because almost a year later, most of it seems forgotten to me somehow, and I don’t want to forget. I’m not sure how the dates line up exactly and I’m not sure how important it is that I line them up. I think I am the only one involved who remembers it all accurately, if anyone else even thinks about it at all anymore. To remember it now, it seems to have its own texture. It is painful yet somehow not unpleasant to think about.
