childhood

When I was little, down the street from my school there was a synagogue. It was set back from the road and had stairs and a pathway and more stairs leading up to it. In spring, the cherryblossom trees in front blossomed into beautiful pink flowers. I thought that I would like to get married there someday.

I remember winters of snow and ice-skating on frozen puddles, chasing each other with icicles. I remember February. When Alyssa and I stood by the snowy flowerbeds and she said, "Pretty soon, this will all be slush." Maybe she meant that spring would come soon, but I always thought this statement was sad.

At recess (glorious recess) we all played monster games in the parking lot. All the girls, that is, except for one girl who played with the boys and one boy who played with the girls. We played Vampire or Medusa or Blob or Creature of the Black Lagoon or even Vampire Tag. And my classmates really did turn into vampires, walking across the blacktop, and I really was scared, but in that thrilling Halloween night way.

I remember the green-paneled carpet closet psychiatrist's office.

There were glorious rainstorms, when we would all run outside and dash down the sidewalk to the blacktop, where we would twirl around and make up rain dances, laughing!

There was always, always the sound of rollerblades over the pavement, or baseball cards clothespinned to bike wheels. And the magic excitement of the nighttime, when Ryan and Nikki and I on sleepovers would play Alien, the mothership landing on the playhouse roof, the aliens lurking around the corner, just in the side yard. Chasing flashlight beams down the sidewalk.

I remember walking outside to the wide cold-star expanse of the front yard and seeing my mother crying.

I remember Catholic school. Religion classes all the time and crayon portraits of Jesus. Ash Wednesday services in the single crowded hallway of my elementary school, with Deacon Larry who was funny and told the story about his wife and the birthday card. I was the only non-Catholic kid and every Ash Wednesday, teachers would ask me why I had washed my ashes off, and I would have to explain that I couldn't get ashes. Second grade held the all-important ritual of First Communion. I held the doors while the kids practiced. But Mrs. Carnevale did let me make a special First Communion Book like everyone else. It was covered in fabric with musical notes on it. The day all my friends took their First Communion, I wore what I thought was the most beautiful jean skirt in the world to church. Kadie got over four hundred dollars from her relatives for First Communion and I was poisonously jealous of her Catholicism. Then she and Holly and I played Creature of the Black Lagoon in the back yard.

In fourth grade, the ritual of Changing Classes began. Up until then, we had stayed in the same classroom every day, but with the apparent academic rigor of fourth grade came the need to go to a different room for each class. We all thought we had to carry every book we owned with us all the time, and the time between bells was a circus of scraggly fourth-graders dropping all their books in the hallway.

I remember when I changed schools and all the kids thought I was either crazy or special-ed.

In Nikki's kitchen there was an enormous fishtank. It took up half a wall. They were Uncle Jimmy's fish. After he passed away, Nikki's mom kept them. Those fish were kind of regarded as demigods.

"Man, you know what? I read this thing in the newspaper about a baby who weighed like one pound. Not even. He was the size of a slice of bread. No, dude, he was the size of a bagel."

To my first birthday party - Ryan's birthday - I wore a beruffled and belaced white dress. All the other kids had jeans and t-shirts.

Nikki and I used to play Zamboni in the driveway. We would slide down on skateboards. I didn't know what a Zamboni was, so I assumed it was some kind of obscure African tribe, and we were imitating their rituals.

When my dad's father died, he stood in the dining room and said, "I guess this means I'm an orphan now." I was jumping on the couch and I said, "No, you're not, you have us!"

The Mulberry Tree was everything. Sanctuary, adventure. A rocket ship. A pirate ship. Ryan and Nikki and I climbed up into it - we each had our own branches that were especially ours - and spent hours there, days, maybe weeks. We had huge binders of looseleaf paper that we drew in. Ryan and I drew mean cartoons of Nikki because she was younger. One time, Ryan pushed Nikki out of the tree and she still has the scar. Those branches were so perfectly shaped. Like the tree wanted us kids to climb it, to live in it, to grow with it. Sometimes we jumped the fence into Jim's yard, with the tetherball and the good apples.

I used to carry a tape recorder around with me and sing into it. One time, Justine stole it and ran down the street broadcasting my performance to all the neighborhood kids. I hated her for months, but then we got to be friends.

There was a cataulpa tree in my front yard and every spring beautiful white blossoms drifted down all over our yard, the sidewalk, the street. There were two huge bushes too. Ryan and Nikki and I would sit under them with a bag of popcorn and a notebook, planning spy missions.

All of these things are so beautiful that it hurts and makes me happy at the same time. I wish I had a projector that I could stick all my memories into, so I could watch them like a movie. But what I have are words, which will have to be good enough.

The other day I stepped out on my front stairs and realized I was ready for spring.