Imprints...

There's this place I know, down by the river near where I live. 

It's just a bench, surrounded by reeds and grasses that stretch up out of the ground and reach toward the midday sun, but from here, you can see everything. 

You can watch the river spiral out in front of you as you sit, watch the boats glide along its glassy surface and watch people walking alongside it, following it until they become black dots in the distance. 

From here, you can watch but you are not seen. 

Now this place, its not particularly special, but to me its one place where I can think.
I found this bench with a boy. He's nothing special to me now but the feeling I had when we found it still lingers there. It hangs in the air around it, warm and sweet, the atmosphere seeping into your skin. Its the feeling of once feeling loved.

Its funny how places harbor memories like this. Everyone has a place, be it a headstone, an old chair or even a gnarled old tree, that they go to so that they can feel how they felt in a different time. 

Everywhere we touch we leave imprints, little pieces of us, scattered around the world just waiting for the moment that we will return to feel them again. It's something that fits, like sliding your hands into a leather glove. It's feeling that familiarity and that completeness of coming full circle and arriving back at the place you once left. 

I know I will visit that bench for the rest of my life. I see myself as an old woman, my walker rattling along the footpath while one of my grandchildren supports me with a firm grip under my elbow, fighting off the grasses and reed with frail, veined hands and sitting down on the bench to watch the sun sink over the crystal surface of the river. And I'll feel that feeling all over again. Young, loved, without a care in the world. And I'll feel good to know that no matter how old, fat or cynical I get, that little girl will always be inside me...somewhere.