"Playground in My Mind..."

So I had some unexpected time this morning and decided to go grocery shopping. I asked my husband if he'd drive "Miss Daisy" so he said only if I make a stop at the dry cleaner. No problem.


We set out on this dreary Spring-like morning ( I say "Spring-like" because it is not  quite official even thought the daffodils and crocuses are sprouting up everywhere!) and he took a route I was hoping he wouldn't. He passes my old house. In order to avert my eyes from too many painful memories, I look around at the surrounding streets. Madonna comes to mind. "This used to be my playground..." 


I saw the places I know like the back of my hand. I don't think there's one bit of my little village that doesn't hold some kind of acute memory for me. The sights, the scents are all there. 


Places I used to play, hide out, make forts, ride my bike. Even the places that  don't even exist anymore I think of as "the vacant lot where we used to play kickball" or where the A&P used to be. There are new facades or completely new buildings but they are all still fresh in my mind!


Where has that time gone? It would seem that the past 30 years are somewhat of a blur to me. And at other times, I feel every memory as if it all just happened. 


My first days of school when we would all pose for pictures with our new book bags and lunch boxes. First grade I had a Bugaloo lunch box and thermos.


The first signs of Spring when the days were longer and the air smelled so sweet and fresh.


The endless summers at the town pool and Robert Moses beaches. 


The hottest days in our apartment complex when the super would turn on the sprinklers and we'd go out in the middle of the grass in our bathing suits! Grass that I am sure hasn't felt the patter of little feet in decades!


Hearing my mother call my name out the kitchen window to get washed up for dinner: "Cyyynnnnnnthiaaaaaaa!" It was the only time she called me Cynthia.


My poodle Guy chasing cars. 


My brother fashioning ramps to do Evel Kenievel-type stunts with his bike with the banana seat.


An abundance of cousins and aunts and uncles and extended family and those who were not blood relatives but were family nonetheless.


Crossing Carll's creek and my library books not quite making it.


Ice skating on the "big" lake and the little ones.


Swimming in the canal. 


Clamming and fishing and crabbing.


Hanging out in a bar drinking root beer and Shirley Temples and having endless quarters for the jukebox. I loved Bad Bad Leroy Brown and Dark Lady. My father loved big blondes.


My first records, friends, crushes, heartbreak.


I am at an age now where most of my life has been spent as an adult yet these are the things that I hold on to. These are the things that come back so brilliantly that I wonder if they actually happened.


 We lived in an apartment complex and there were a lot of families.  First, Sally and her dad lived downstairs then Helen and her husband and the boys. Charlie was my age and my first real crush.  Joanne and Barbara and their "mysterious" (mysterious when you're seven) older brother Bobby, Lori and Lisa, Donna and Dawn.  The fire changed everything. Mr. Palmer and his daughter. There was the blind lady. The super and his  family of boys.(If there were sisters, I don't recall.) Darlene and Vinny and Little Richie. They had a cousin we called Tuna Fish. Betty, the nice lady that lived next to Joyce and Vito and taught me how to crochet and made a fancy crown for my First Holy Communion. Cathy and her sons. She used to cut our hair. The druggie lady across the way who had a kid that I stayed with sometimes while she went out (Until my mother told me I wasn't allowed over there anymore). I was probably in second grade! The lady who had an English setter named Cindy. I think the lady's name was Mabel. Guy and David. Connie. Chris and Danny. The other Joyce with the two boys. The kid who hit me in the head with a rock and my mother had a huge fight with his sister in front of half the complex. Bonnie and her sister who had CP and their creepy brother Kenny who told a story that gave me nightmares well into my twenties. Hemena (think that's her name). The lady that died (at least I think she died). I remember when they took her out she looked green! 


I wonder if this memory is real: I remember summer nights the families would take their lawn chairs and blankets and portable radios and the adults would laugh and talk and we would be outside in our pajamas. Some kids were catching fireflies or doing cartwheels or playing Parcheesi. The adults were most likely drinking.


Those days were magical to me. I can hear the sound track of seventies music playing in my head. I can hear Paul Simon singing "Late in the evening...and the music's seeping through." (The song is not from the seventies but the imagery takes me there.) I remember falling asleep to lilting laughter of adulthood. I longed to be grown up and and stay up late laughing "the way some ladies do..."





It's Springtime! Get out in the world and re-live your childhood!