I’ve lived my whole life in the same house. It’s the yellow one with the white trim, in the spot where house number eight should be but isn’t. It’s a square colonial circa the 1940s and I love it with all my heart. It’s positioned right in the middle of the road whose name sounds like a holiday. It’s an Island in a little sea of yard, and it’s the one place I feel most comfortable. My identity and sense of self is all wrapped up in the neighborhood and house that raised me. Everyone and everything in that half mile radius that is my neighborhood, has played a role in creating the childhood I had, and the person I’ve become.
When I think back on my childhood, I remember it being very free. I remember nighttime games of manhunt, and solitary bike rides, cruising through streets I knew like the back of my hand. I remember going out for hours on end and coming back muddied and alive, tousled by the earth and all of the magic it offered to us. When I was younger, it was imaginary games. I remember being spies in a kingdom of trees, and creatures inhabiting a ship that looked suspiciously like a swing set.
Those experiences fostered my creativity, and my appreciation and bond with the outdoors. Those wild, warm summer nights where we “painted the town” in our young innocent way are some of my fondest memories. I still feel excitement wherever I am, when the smell of the air or the formation of the clouds in the sky triggers my memory and suddenly I’m eleven again, creeping through my neighbor’s yards, trying not to be tagged. Those days and nights I spent alone or in the company of kids my age made me feel free and independent, and taught me how to be an individual.
Through those days and nights and the many more I couldn’t possibly elaborate on, I have built friendships and relationships that I know will last my lifetime. For as long as I can remember I’ve lived two hundred feet away from one of my very best friends. Our families are friends, and through our close proximity growing up, we really had no choice but to be friends!
She was my partner in all worlds imaginary, and my accomplice in neighborhood games that threatened to be ruled solely by boys. We’d sit together in trees and read, and as we got older, talk about the things in the world that amazed us or confused us. She’s been a constant in my life forever, and I didn’t realize until moving away to college how lucky I was to have that and how important it was to me even when I didn’t know it. When I think about my neighborhood, her face is always there, along with many more who have watched me and helped me to grow up.
These are the people that make my neighborhood what it is. They make it a community, one that has impromptu summer evening parties, and casual conversations on the streets. They’re the people I’ve seen change and grow around me, but somehow always stay the same. When I chose a college, I wanted one with a strong community feel, and I can attribute that personal importance to my neighborhood. As I get older and my life changes, I can be sure that whenever I step across that threshold and into my neighborhood, I will feel that sense of safety that I feel nowhere else in this world. It is my home, and for that I am grateful.
