There is a certain kind of nostalgia that comes when the weather changes and the leaves drop like unevenly weighted balloons down to browning grass. There seems to be memories sparked by the smells of faraway snow and burning wood. The taste of apple cider sits along the back of my tongue and makes swallowing seem thicker than usual, like tears could be called up a little easier this time of year. When I write, I have a habit of putting my hand over my mouth to read back what I have written, and somehow my fingertips are always colder than the rest of me now that October has blended into November. It is a funny thing, nostalgia. I simultaneously feel that I am too young to have much of a life to look back on and think “those were the days,” while often wishing I was a child again.
The Colonial Parkway is a road constructed by the National Park Service throughout the 26 years of pre-depression through post-World War Two America. Its 23-mile, stone roadway blends the harsh marsh into the sandy, crumbling edge of the York River, where on her best day she flows into the Chesapeake Bay and her worst she sits stagnant and mosquito filled. My thoughts turn to this road in Yorktown, Virginia when asked about November and nostalgia. Because along this stretch of two-way road is where the leaves change first in my town. Where the air turns lighter with the absence of humid river salt and the smoke from the wood fires at Jamestown float to mingle with the cloud cover at the mouth of the bay. When I was young, my family would bundle up into sweaters and swishy-fabric jackets and drive along the parkway to get to Colonial Williamsburg. I would always sit behind my mother on the passenger side, press my face up against the window and watch as the yellow-stone road blurred underneath the tires of my Father’s truck. The closer we got to Williamsburg, the more wilted the Yorktown Onion flowers got, the darker the horizon line of pine trees felt and the more orange the sky bled.
Williamsburg in the fall is where the ghosts of the colonies come to make the blacksmiths forgery ring out and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves a common sound. The rows of brick houses from 1600’s have modern style house paint adorning their front doors, and local garden club wreaths hanging prettily from brass knockers. We would walk our small group of four up and down the dusty streets and breathe in the new fall air and listen to the interpreters tell the tourists the stories of my hometown. We could always spot the tourists, wide-eyed and easily swayed by the claims of “George Washington spent the night here” and
“This is the original pot-pie recipe of the south,” always clutching onto children’s hands and bedecked with backpacks. However, as locals we knew that if you turned down a small light-brown dirt path after the Kings Head Inn but before the old Parliament house you would enter a sort of colonial speakeasy. This small structure housed the best hot cider you ever burnt your tongue on, and cookies that may have been the size of my head but tasted like the finest crafted morsel of dough and chocolate ever made.
Remembering Williamsburg and the parkway while a candle flickers on my window sill, feels very adult-ish of me, and it reminds me just how ready I am to go home. So when I take the turn (exit 235 off 64) to the Colonial Parkway in a few weeks, I’ll roll down my car window, motion to my little sister in the passenger seat and hope that my next breath tastes like wood ash and cinnamon.
