Old Familiar Places

Having lived in five states and no longer having strong connections to any of them, I find it hard to answer the question "where are you from," and yet I find an emotional connection to old and familiar places.  The other day I drove through Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.  I spent many happy years there getting a four year degree. Intellectually I really grew up there. It is also were I first poked my head out of the closet and found people like me, oh and love, I found love there.  My sweet bear was an adjunct professor there when we met (I had a faculty parking sticker the last year I was a student there.) Just driving by, brings on a sense of calm and a desire to get back in the classroom again. When I am back in Lexington I always need to drive down Main Street and back up Vine Street.  I like driving past my former offices.  In the town my parents live in, I always need to drive along the old road along the Indian River, great views of the Space Center, and quiet and calming memories. I don't remember a lot of Arizona, I was in the first grade the winter we lived there, but I remember the smell of the high desert on a cold winter morning.  Smells have strong memory associations for me.  It has been about a decade since I was last in the area I was born in - in Michigan.  Even there the place evokes memories - but I have little desire to visit and no desire to ever live there again.  But still even after nearly four decades, there is a sense of familiarity. People, and buildings and even roads have changed, but the place remains hauntingly familiar.