Exit 159

I was on my way home from the beach and as I approached exit 159 on I-26 I started to feel nostalgic. The old house at the end of the off ramp was once my childhood home. I always feel a tug at my heartstrings the closer I get. Is it because this is the place I learned to ride a bike, climb a tree? Is it the motorcycle rides my dad would take me on though the fields and down the dirt roads? Or is it because this was when my childhood was the things of books and movies where summer's endless days lay one adventure after another before me, and where winter means Christmas. Or is it because all of the innocence that is childhood is intact. Shortly after we moved my parents divorced, at the time I was fine with it. Every time I see this old house surrounded by old oaks and that one ancient magnolia, a small part of me mourns the loss of a piece of my childhood that died an untimely death. That house holds nothing for me now but memories, so why at 35 I still feel that tug as I drive by? Maybe I wasn't fine with it after all.