A trip back home
Erica shared this photo yesterday. My childhood home.
My parents bought this house for $40K back in 1971.
The basement flooded during heavy rains, the radiators could never quite keep up with the cold coming up from the garage and the attic was a frequent flophouse for the local squirrel population.
It was perfect.
The street was filled with kids around our age. The back of the driveway was a makeshift basketball court or street hockey rink. The patch of dirt in the backyard that never filled in with grass became an off-road course for a suitcase full of matchbox cars.
In the summer, we rode our bikes everywhere. The neighboring office buildings became our playground, with room for any sport or any game we could dream up. And the local stream, though lightly tinged with chemical waste (from one of those office buildings) was a place to fish, to explore, to pretend we were just about anywhere in the world.
Fall meant block parties and halloween with full sized candy bars and “big kids” trying to scare the crap out of the rest of us. It meant Mischief Night, filling trees with TP and car windows with x-rated messages written in soap or shaving cream. It meant the turning of the leaves and the raking of those leaves (several damn times, every damn year) into multi-hued piles of maple, beech and dogwood. Each one tempting us until we couldn’t resist jumping in, gleefully indifferent to the mess we knew we’d be raking back up long after dark.
Winters brought heavy snows, which meant forts carved out of freshly plowed berms and snowball fights that lasted until dinner time. It meant arduous shoveling, not just on our seemingly endless driveway, but for some of the older neighbors who were kind enough to give us a dollar or a fresh meal in return. We took our sleds down the icy remnants of each storm, with reckless abandon. If they could bottle the feeling from those rides, I would drink it every day and gladly face whatever hangover might ensue.
Spring was wet, melting snow giving way to heavy downpours and puddles that were perfect for stomping. Hope was back in the air and school was almost over, not coincidentally. Backyard wiffle ball and nerf football were on the schedule again and we had the muddy sneakers in each of our homes to prove it. The lawn mowers returned as well, giving all of us a fresh dose of the most wonderful smell in the world. And another chance for some of us to earn a few dollars from our generous neighbors.
No matter what time of year, life was always messy. We fought, we cried, we kicked and screamed. We got sick. We got lonely. And sometimes, we stood together in shock and sadness as one of our neighbors passed on, leaving a hole that would take years to fill, and never quite all the way.
Looking back, it’s hard not to get emotional. The relationships formed on that street still live on. The bond is strong. Our memories, the glue that holds them all together. At the time, I’m not sure I realized how special, or how rare, this little street really was. How lucky I was to grow up in a place where I felt safe, loved and free to figure out who I might turn out to be someday.
My parents sold the house almost 9 years ago and moved on to Arizona. My brother and I are even further away in southern California. Growing up in that cozy split level feels like a lifetime ago. Another world, really.
But somehow, the right memory always seems to find a way back when we need it most. And lately, we’ve been needing them more than ever.