One day you go to the place where your best memories were created, without having any idea that it would be the last time. Something like that happened with this place. It was designed for families and for children’s fun. It was similar to the fairs often seen in Hollywood movies, except it was not tied to a celebration or a specific occasion. It was permanent, open every day, and it was where people from the city gathered to be happy.
This is not necessarily a sad post, but it is inevitably a nostalgic one. On Wednesday morning, I had to go to a post office located near what is now the ruins of what was once that family park. After finishing the errands that took me there in the first place, I decided to walk around. I knew beforehand that it would be a walk filled with memories and melancholy, perhaps more melancholy than expected.
I still remember my father making a real effort to take my mother, my brother, and me there. We spent hours and hours having fun. It was a space designed for children and teenagers. The buildings had a dreamlike appearance, as if you had suddenly stepped into the setting of an Aladdin movie. Relatives and friends from other states were amazed and said that nothing like it existed where they lived.
You could play arcade video games in stores designed so that children of the 1990s would beg their parents to take them there. The first time I remember drinking a pink frozen lemonade was there. That Wednesday, after leaving the post office, instead of going home to cool off from the unbearable heat, I decided to walk and follow my inner child.
I reached what remains of the place where I was most genuinely happy in my life, and the visit brought a raw tear of resignation. I will not go into the reasons for its decline. Every building shown in these photographs holds an important memory for me. Younger people see only ruins. For those from Valencia, Venezuela, this place still matters. For me, it is the remains of something that was once meaningful.
