Lost

Two steps from the asphalt road, my feet strike a well-worn dirt path. Four more steps and I’ve entered the magical portal to the New World, my name for a peaceful, wild, nature-filled, hidden neighborhood that used to be as familiar to me as my childhood bedroom.

The New World looked like places our family vacationed up north. There weren't neat lines where one messy yard ended and another started. The grass was long enough to blow in the breeze, and the houses looked tired but well-loved. Gardens were everywhere, dogs and cats roamed, and cars were parked on gravel or dirt driveways.

This New World was my getaway whenever I craved space to lose myself while riding Lucky, my sorrel horse; a place to wind through the deep snow on my brother Jack’s rickety snowmobile (without his permission); or a chance to escape the constant parental wars at home. Time spent in the New World seemed dreamy. I could breathe deeper, think more clearly, and relax in the arms of nature. Closer to the lake I’d hear bullfrogs’ deep croaking.

Today, almost a half-century later, I enter the New World carrying immense grief over the death of my granddaughter, Helena. I’m alone, as I was when visiting this place as a kid. My legs feel like bricks. I focus on picking up each foot and swinging it forward.

Entering the once magical, overgrown space, I’m surprised to see a swimming pool, swing set, patio furniture, and raised garden beds. Hmmm clunk-clunk, my brain spins roughly, trying to process this change as I veer left, the way I would have turned when riding Lucky.

What I see scrambles my mind: paved roads, matching mailboxes, manicured lawns, rows of vinyl-sided two-story houses, and people in jogging suits walking their dogs.

Feeling disoriented, I stop a man who’s walking a small, well-groomed dog. “Excuse me,” I say, “if I keep going, will I get to the racetrack? You know, where the 24 Outdoor Theater used to be?”

“What? That had to be over forty years ago.”

“I’m staying at my daughter’s in Hales Corners,” I explain. “I used to come here all the time... There was a lake over there, and—”

“Kelly Lake is still there,” he says, pointing.

“We used to call that Mud Lake. I boarded my horse there at Jeffers’ place. He had a chinchilla farm. I meant a smaller lake—it was hidden over there.”

“Yes, it’s still there behind those houses.” I look, but I only see giant, perfect homes, lots of white concrete, street signs, and dead ends.

I ask him if continuing forward will circle me back to Hales Corners. His directions are mind-boggling: turn left, turn right, and don’t turn on any dead-end streets (duh!). After relating a list as long as a kite’s tail, he ends with: “You’ll come out to Grange Avenue.”

My eyes roll. “Grange is a horrible road to walk on.”

“Yes, I wouldn’t walk on it either.”

Hmmm, clunk-clunk. I tell him I graduated from Whitnall High School in 1976. He shares that he graduated in 1974. He mentions I look too young, and I question him about his cataracts. He chuckles, shakes his head, and volunteers the name of a great place to get a fish fry.

Walking back down the hill, out of the New World, where the word New has a whole new meaning, I feel so heavy that I think of stopping to dump the sand out of my shoes. But there is none.

Hmmm, clunk-clunk. It’s a Friday night, and fish fries are what people in Milwaukee and its suburbs do. It’s what my family used to do. But tonight we won’t be going out. Mrs. Leonard, who knew Helena from her work at the local school, will be setting a hot meal outside our door. She has been an angel—she says that helping us helps her deal with the recent death of her husband.

When I get back to the house, I tell my daughter and son-in-law where I went. I express my shock at the hordes of huge houses and relate my conversation with the man I asked about the old dirt racetrack.

Jessica insists the area changed in the 1970s, Brad thinks the early ’80s, and it occurs to me that I left the area in 1976, the year I gave birth to Jessica. The New World must have been destroyed shortly after, to be replaced by an overdeveloped subdivision while I became a young mother.

Today, with grief coursing through my body and despair weighing my feet down, I would have benefited from the sanctuary of the New World. I would have loved to see the old tumble-down houses and hidden lakes and take a few fast turns around the racetrack on Lucky’s back or on my old blue Stingray bicycle.

But the times have changed. Helena’s shining light has left this world, and the New World is nothing like it used to be.

Mission Accomplished

Forty-One Mouths

Jane Schmidt