Perspective Shifts

My dad was born in Chillicothe, Ohio - home of a papermill and its requisite scent. Until I was 10, I had a great-grandparent living there. I hated visiting.

That great-grandma was not a particularly kind human being. There were few redeeming factors in the experience. I do have a beautiful dresser from that house. Other than the dresser, all my childhood memories of the town are rather negative because of the great-grandma there.

Fast forward to 2003. After my grandmother's death, we spent time in Chillicothe on our way to smaller towns to bury ashes.

Chillicothe had become a really nice little town. Old buildings. The railroad station where my great-grandfather worked for the B&O. The house where my father was born. The hill where my great-grandfather let my dad drive a deuce and a half truck when he was 7.

Somehow the smell of the papermill was so much less. Probably my perspective changing...

That was a good day. The proverbial walk down memory lane - but it wasn't really memory lane. It was a creation of memory. Revamped memories to reflect what was there all along that I was too young to see - history, architecture, hills, connection of past to present.

Same reality. Same hills. Same town.

Entirely different experience for me.

That's how everything is. Our perspective creates the experience.