Lucky we live Hawaii.

@postaday 219; #postaday2011.

On Facebook, I’ve been included in two “You know you’re from…” tangents because I spent my first 11 years of life in Riverside, N. J., and then we moved across the highway to Delran. I lived there until I escaped at 18.

Because believe me, I needed to escape. It wasn’t so much the area or the people, but it was the turmoil at home. Even now when I go back, someone always wants to have a knock-down-drag-out about some stupid-ass wrongly perceived slight that happened 38 years ago. I do not care to be forced to dig into the corners of my mind on a memory scavenger hunt to find something that might look like someone else’s. It could never be. The memories are painted differently by each of us. Yours don’t equal mine.

There were some Riverside memories that I recalled, but now the list is populated mostly by people who were born after I left. My memories don’t match theirs. I’m mulling slipping out the back door of the row house I lived in on Rush Street, its screen always getting pushed out of the window by we three littles going in and out. It banged hard every time. The Delran memories string began yesterday, and I’ve yet to participate. I spent less time there than I did in Riverside. These were my teen  years, a time I truly don’t like to look back on, and I was only there for six years. I might just observe. Why go there?

It’s funny, because when these groups started, I thought I might be included in the Hawaii Kai one. That, too, doesn’t really apply. It’s for my husband John and now it’s for my girls.

I’m lucky I live in Hawaii, and I’ve been here 30 years now. But I feel more like a citizen of something even bigger. Every time I look up, I feel as though there is a message being sent to me, and that there’s always a message I need to send out.

And here we are. Look forward and live for the future.