No Postcards (by Laurie Faria Stolarz)

We don’t always realize it at the time, but the places that shape us are rarely grand. They’re smaller, quieter, stitched into the fabric of everyday life. Looking back, the map of my youth isn’t organized by postcard destinations, but by feeling. Each place holds a version of me, preserved in motion.

There was the broken wall. It stood where a house had once been, long before my time. By the time I found it, all that remained was a stretch of concrete—cracked, weather-worn, and layered with years of tagging and graffiti. Thick bubble letters overlapped in faded reds and blues, names half-scratched out and rewritten. The wall came up to about my hips, just high enough to lean on, just low enough to see over. From there, you could catch a partial view of the neighborhood: backyards with rusting swing sets, chain-link fences, a dog that barked at everything. My older brother had spent time there before me, which made it feel almost inherited, like a quiet rite of passage. Sometimes I just ran my hands over the rough concrete, picking at loose pebbles, staying until the light started to fade.

Behind my house stretched the fields. In the spring and early summer, they filled with lilacs—soft clusters of purple and white, heavy with scent. The smell hit before you even stepped all the way in, sweet and lush. I would wander through them with a pair of dull kitchen scissors, cutting armfuls until my fingers felt sticky. I’d bring them home and arrange them into uneven bouquets in whatever cups or jars I could find, petals already beginning to fall. The air back there always felt quieter, softened by the hum of insects and the distant sound of someone mowing a lawn blocks away.

Somewhere in those same fields sat a rock. Flat enough to sit on, warm from the sun by midday, it became a meeting place, a headquarters of sorts. My friends and I would climb onto it with backpacks stuffed with crushed chips and warm cans of soda, and declare it the starting point of whatever we were about to invent. We made maps—messy, hand-drawn things in spiral notebooks—of mysteries that needed solving. A broken branch became evidence. A sound in the distance meant we were close. We’d argue over clues, redraw routes, decide who was in charge, and then change our minds five minutes later.

Then there was the grocery store. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and the air always carried a mix of cleaner, cardboard, and something faintly sour from the bottle return. It was where I worked, where I grew into myself alongside a group of people who became something like family. In the back, there was a narrow hallway lined with towering boxes for bottle redemption, the floor sometimes sticky no matter how often it was mopped. We’d squeeze ourselves into that space, half-hidden from the rest of the store, and talk about everything—love, heartache, acceptance, rejection, life, and death. 

Late nights belonged to Denny’s. The booths smelled faintly like syrup, the menus sticky at the edges. We’d order coffee loaded with chocolate syrup and too much whipped cream—our version of something fancy—and sit there for hours. Refills came and went. The same songs played overhead. Sometimes we didn’t notice how late it had gotten until the sky started to lighten through the windows.

At the park, there was a basketball court. The pavement was cracked in places, and the net was half-torn. I wasn’t a basketball player—not even close—but I’d go there anyway, chasing the simple goal of getting to 21. The bounce, the pause, the shot—over and over, until my arms were tired.

Nearby, the elementary school wall served a different kind of purpose. Red brick, slightly uneven, with a patch of blacktop that sloped just enough to send the ball off at unpredictable angles. When no one else was around, I’d bring a tennis ball and hit it against the wall over and over again, the steady thud echoing across the empty space—just me, the wall, and the rhythm of it.

And then there was the ocean. I’ve been lucky to always have it nearby. By the water, the air smells like seaweed, and the wind never stops. Back then, I’d sit on the beach with my heels in the sand, watching the horizon stretch out. I skipped rocks, counting each touch, and collect seashells I didn’t need, letting them pile up in my pockets. Now, the ocean is my meditation. I breathe it in and try my best to stay in the moment.

Looking back, none of these places were extraordinary on their own. A broken wall with fading graffiti. Lilacs scattered across a field. A sun-warmed rock. A narrow hallway that smelled like soda and cardboard. A sticky booth in the middle of the night. A torn net, a brick wall, an endless stretch of shoreline. But they’re very much a part of me.