You can never, whatever you do
Set foot in the same brook twice.
All that you see is new,
Another roll of the dice.
When I was a kid we spent every summer vacation in Sydney, Nova Scotia. Two dogs, four kids, Mum, Dad and all the gear we’d need for camping, packed into our Ford station wagon for three days on the road.
Until yesterday it had been more than five decades since I visited 99 South Bentick Street, the paternal seat of our branch of the Spence clan in North America. So I suppose it’s not surprising things have changed.
What did surprise me though was how much my memories of things that haven’t changed all that much in all that time were so distorted.
The scene of our childhood adventures, a brook that ran through a ravine where South Bentick dead ended, isn’t much more than a ditch. And all the ghosts have fled the cemetery farther up the ravine, the spooky setting of our horror stories.
Some of the change is real, however. The address of my grandparents’ house is no longer 99 South Bentick… to anyone but me that is, and probably my siblings. I won’t go into the complex details, but the ancestral mansion is now in the 400 block. And it’s no longer clad in green shingles with white trim; it’s siding is vinyl, like most other houses on the street.
Venturing farther afield I found myself in a town that mixes elements of things remembered with sights I never could have imagined. A gigantic cruise ship was docked in the harbour, where we sometimes ventured as children. And at the end of the boardwalk – which didn’t exist in our world – ‘the ‘world’s biggest fiddle’ awaits.