The streets are stone. Bricks that can tell you stories from the times of

the country’s birth. Roads that have held the steps of a thousand feet.

Waysides that have been weathered by centuries of storm and sun.

 The houses.

 I could describe them for hours, imagine to you their details of Greek proportions. The balconies are held by swirls of midnight steel. Bricks are outlined with green—vines and blossoms grow to the shingled roofs. Small towers lined with windows that have held the gaze of a thousand eyes.

 This city is old. Far older than I, and even older than the country I pledge my allegiance to. It means something to me. The history that has occurred here. The boots that have marched the cobblestone streets, the horses that have trotted over the old granite roads, the dresses that have dragged across the brick sidewalks, every head that has been touched by the same sun overhead. The power, the beauty of the mansions, and to know that the same art I marvel at was once so commonplace.

 What would it have been like? To have dressed in such layers and colors and lace to my toes? To have my hair piled gorgeously upon a painted head? Where servants awaited every beck and call?

 What would I have been in that world? One hundred, two hundred years ago? Would I still be a child who would smile and nod and eagerly meet suitors with glittering eyes? Could I have been raised so sophisticated and with grace? To know all the steps, have memorized all the lines? Would I have curtsied and spoken softly and sipped from my cup? Might I have been haughty and rich? Sour and selfish, desiring only the best, refusing anything but? Would I have raised my nose as I passed the less fortunate? Would I have been poor? With calloused hands and a hard dirty face? Begging for coppers and bread? Would I have bowed low to the rich carriages and worked all my life?

 When I was grown and time not as long ago, would I have walked by the sea and the stone and the mansions with a child in a bonnet, dozing in a frilled carriage? Would my husband surprise me with gowns and jewels, and would he take me out at night to dance and toast and gather with the others in our class? Would he teach the children to swim in that vast expanse of blue? Would they climb trees and make dirty their play clothes? Would I cook and clean and care and be perfectly content for the love in my life? Would I dress my darlings in their most pristine clothes for the church service ten blocks away?

 This city has held soldiers. Held wives, held local royalty. These streets bore the bare steps of the unlucky and held the wheels of the rich. These rooms bore the joy of a ball, and these parks held the walks of many mothers. Boys have paced these porches in preparation to be happy. Survivors have taken their first free steps on this sand.

 In one hundred or maybe two hundred more years, will people wonder at our homes? Will they imagine our way of life and dream about it the same? Will people fly over our streets and think about the cars that have driven them? The shoes that have crossed them? The paws that have drummed over the cement?

Will they look at our houses and look on our times of jeans and phones and gasoline as primitive or fantasy, or will our time be insignificant?

 A hundred years, or maybe more, from now, will a girl, just fifteen, travel my city and think of my footsteps? Of my sandals as I’ve sat in the sun? The music and laughter I’ve shared with the ones I love in the grass by a tree in the yard?

 Could she look on my church and imagine, with wonder, the songs I have sung without taking care to see the history I make with tired lips?

 Yes, these streets, so many thousands of miles away from my own, are made of stone.

 My streets are made of cement and asphalt. My home is not even a century. My steps and my words and my life are yet small, so young. Much have I to live, to learn. Much of my own streets have I to walk.

 In a hundred years, or maybe two hundred, I will have lived. I will have loved, I will have cried. I will have finished my life and not drowned in the past or suffered in the future. I will have meant something to enough people to be remembered for a time.

 And in the end, I will die.

 Like the thousands of feet that have stood where I stand. Like the trillions of lives that have touched this earth.

 My streets may not be made of stone. No horse brings my love to my door. My house is not grand and of brick.

 But my street is my own and no one else’s. So no street is worth more than that.