If you live long enough, you see many things pass in your lifetime. You almost always outlive a pet; often we outlive our parents and both losses are fairly traumatic. Your pets are like your family and without the gift of speech, you have only to trust their behaviors and reactions. The loss of a pet is difficult because that pet can't say goodbye or offer closure to the wonderful part of your life that you have shared. When your parents pass, the grief is often huge but can be eventually placed to the wonderful memories shares in your life from moments of youth to celebrations of adulthood like marriages and partnerships and children and grandchildren. Very often we get closure but we almost always get to communicate. Even our careers and jobs pass. It wasn't long ago that I looked around CRMS and thought it won't be too long and I won't be there. That time is approaching rapidly.
Lest you think I am writing about those monumental occasions, I am not. Today as I was driving from some last minute grocery shopping to start the week, I passed by the old Columbia Arena in Fridley, MN. It stands derelict to the play area that once was teeming with youth, rehearsal space, and the local arena that everyone knew and often followed their local hockey teams. As i passed, it made me think about so many buildings in our lives that we leave behind haunted with memories that were at one time were important, vital, or even character defining.
Last summer tornado destroyed my old high school. While high school wasn't the greatest time in my life as most would remember, the destruction of it cut close to home. So many things happened to me and my high school friends there, romances were won and lost, contests, performances, even many of the teachers who walked those halls are no longer with us. With the loss of the that building, we lose Mr. Hall's room or Mr. Burn's art room. Amazing how 3 years of one's life are tied to that building. Your hall where your locker was your space for 3 years. With the quickness and ferocity of a train, the building collapses and so does part of your history.
Going back to my home town and seeing the house where I grew up in a different color and the backyard fenced in and my dad's garden replaced with a swing set told me I was truly no longer a piece of that property's being. I suppose that is true as everyone grows up and away. While some people eventually move into the house they were raised in, for most of us- it becomes a new journey only to visit during celebrations. Those passings are inevitable and force our own journey which whether we like it or not, we have to travel.
My life was built around teaching young people. The first school where I had my first room, chaperoned my first dance, worked my first football game as a teacher, saw the first graduation that I had been part of was removed and made way for a newer building. Fewer bricks of red with more modern conveniences without a worn stairwell made of marble and a wrought iron hand rail. ADA changed so many things about what schools could be and what they had to be, it was only a matter of time. The school officials saw to let pieces of the old building be purchased. Friends of mine got a piece of my first floor and a brick from the old demolished building. While I can no longer walk the 3 classroom hallway which I thought was giant back then, I can still have a piece of the old yellow shellacked floor. While the building is no longer in its original, I have a vital piece to connect with the thousands of memories of those first 6 years. Soon that time will come for me to do the same for CRMS. This marks my 26th year there and have worked from 4 different rooms in that span.
The old Columbia Arena is an eye sore at this point. The building itself has remained too long. The round building where they filmed Mighty Ducks, the 49'er Days' celebrations at the park where you could see the helicopter land for rides, the craft fairs that were once part of the yearly use of that buildings are just ghosts from another time. Ghosts who wander the along the parking lot in disrepair and covered in rogue grass breaking the tar into incomplete patterns. I will not say good bye to Columbia Arena just yet. Some investor will dream and see it rise like a Phoenix along University Ave. Once again vital with the cheers of loyal fans!
Keith
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