Dear Lorfink of Arabia,
I was in our old school on Sunday. It's strange that our school isn't our school anymore. If anyone unfamiliar with Assumption School stumbles across this (which they probably won't), Assumption closed about six years ago. Since then, the town has acquired it and has made it a public school, which my inner third grader still thinks of as a travesty. You don't expect at 18 to discover that your childhood has vanished while you were still a child.
Students go there everyday, but they're not wearing navy blue mary janes or gray pants that seemed to rip if you just brushed against the ground. They're not Assumption students firmly agreeing with Dr. G that Assumption was the best school in Wood-Ridge, Bergen County, New Jersey, the United States, North America, the world, the Milky Way, and finally, the universe. They don't have to dress up as St. Patrick or St. Elizabeth Ann Seton or an angel for the May Crowning. They don't even have May Crownings! And we all know a second grade year is not complete without a May Crowning.
But I knew all this before I was in there on Sunday teaching a CCD class. I knew I was the only person in the room who knew that my room was my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Noonan's, room. I spent a year of my life in that room, but it's all been wiped away. There's almost a disconnection from what came before. The whole school feels like its past has been buried under a new facade.
People have a very inflated sense of self-importance. They expect to be remembered. Yet, time is so fleeting that I can't even go back to my old school. I'm not alone in this; every former student of Assumption can never really go back. There's a faint resemblance of our school, but they've disguised it well. I actually took a wrong turn to get out, misguided by my mental blueprint of the school. I found myself in the hallway leading to the old door that the old wing left from each day. They don't seem to use that door anymore since they built a handicapped accessible door next to it that's right next to the elevator.
For a minute though, I was transported back in time. I could picture standing there with Therese when I was in second grade and she in kindergarten, waiting to get out. I was so pleased that year that I got to pick her up each day and bring her with me. Normally, we'd see the sixth graders take down the flag and come inside; Titus was normally with them. I walked up those stairs so many mornings, having the most ridiculous conversations with my classmates. In my heart, I know I'd avoid the red parts of the floor, because you know, that's the lava. For a moment, I was Caitlin L. in the only place I had ever truly been her.
In a book I'd read ages ago, they talked about people who were still alive haunting places they'd been before. In some ways, I think of Assumption that way. Four little girls still play with Polly Pockets while ignoring their older brothers' basketball game and Caitlin L. is still eagerly raising her hand for every single question and little girls in grey skorts jumping rope and Matthias is still blowing the whistle for the Christmas Concert that one year. It's just a little depressing when the ghosts are buried under so much newness, and no one sees them but me.
Just a little girl in a grey skort turning the jump rope,
Caitlin L.
