My Sacred Place

Now a barren land, with no life; once was a prospering road filled with the laughter and joy of kids playing all together. It’s now a skeleton road and neighborhood, no young life out and about running and riding their bikes down the street. The older family, like my great grandmother although their spirits young and full of life, their bodies aren’t so young, and can’t necessarily take long and extensive walks because their limbs can’t carry that type of pressure as often anymore.

Everyday, you could guarantee those same kids would be right there outside in the road. A private, family road; it didn’t see much action from outsiders, but everyone that was family would always stop by-at least once a week. Summer vacations were the highlight for the children that lived on that street, myself included, I would wait for summer break to come, because I knew when it came we were going to Granny’s! We would be driving down the road and we could see the brown house that signaled the turn to our road was coming and we would start chanting “Granny’s, Granny’s, Granny’s”, and to no avail could our parents get us to stop.

This road is where my great grandmother lived, and still lives today. It’s the road where I discovered who I am, it’s the road that helped build up my creativity and imagination into what it has become today. Without this road, I very well could hate writing, which would be a tragedy, because writing is my passion now.

Quincy, Florida, in Gadsden County. This is where my sacred place is. It’s close to my heart, and never too far from home now.

The street that was one that you would only know was there if you had already been there. There aren’t any white lines running down the center of the road, it’s a dirt road where you can feel the rocks and gravel as you drive over it, a bumpy road that I came to love, as soon as you made the second left turn you were on our street, and you were driving in between two rows of tall bushy bushes, and the same gravely dirt road continued, but now there were huge dents in the road because it was a very uneven road, every time you would drive down the road you would feel as though you’re on a rollercoaster. As soon as you got past the bushes you could see the kids running around, playing with each other, and you could see my great grandmother, my step great grandfather, my great aunt, and my multiple cousins sitting on the porch conversing with one another.

There were no traffic lights for miles and miles out here; it was wonderfully peaceful, only the sounds of the big family of us that lived out there.

The house is a trailer house, but no one ever thinks of it as that. My great grandmother built two attachments to it, so it honestly looks like a house. The wood floor inside have been uncovered and are pristine condition, although very creaky and feeling them feels as if there’s leftover sawdust, it’s still great condition for an old floor. The exterior of the house has suffered many storms, hurricane after hurricane, and horrible thunderstorms back to back — this is Florida after all, you expect nothing less; even through all that beating and pounding of the rain the only damage done over the years are a few spots where the water leaks through during rainstorms or thunderstorms, it’s actually become a melancholy sound to the ears of anyone who lives here. It’s as if if you don’t hear the sounds of the dripping of the water into the buckets we’ve put underneath the holes to stop the dripping, that’s when there’s a problem.