[Prompt: Describe a place or event in your childhood and its effect on you.]
In Stonewood, my former neighborhood, Christmas was a constant -- secure and warm and filled with bright lights and comforting smells. I spent each December evening staring out of my bedroom window at the Christmas lights that decorated the houses on my street. Finally, on Christmas Eve, I would journey over to the house on the corner, the house that consistently had the brightest, prettiest lights in the neighborhood, and prepare to decorate the largest fir tree I’d ever seen fit inside a living room. This house belonged to the family of my best friend Julia, a spunky Puerto Rican girl who always wore a cross around her neck and a trendy slap-bracelet on her wrist. As soon as I arrived each Christmas Eve, Julia and I would start unpacking the hundreds of ornaments from the big satin-lined boxes she kept in her closet all year. I remember the reds and greens, the shiny ornaments, and the fake holly we used to decorate the wrought-iron stairway railing. The security and warmth I felt at Julia’s on those evenings lasted all year in Stonewood and now keep my former neighborhood in my heart.
The beauty of Stonewood lay in its imperfections. No two houses were alike: a blue Victorian stood next to a two-story modern. Some of the houses had attics, some had pools, and one even had a fountain outside. The houses had been built in the early 1970s, and most suffered from chipping paint, splintered wood, and avocado-green paneling. Julia's house had marble floors, a pool, and a dock. We spent our summers ranging between her backyard and mine. In hers, we could swing on the jungle gym or watch fireworks over the lake; mine boasted a sandbox and the best climbing trees. When lightning struck down the tallest oak, my friends came by to mourn the loss.
Most of the children my age lived in the houses near mine, towards the back of Stonewood. We spent summers running through sprinklers, hopped into piles of leaves in the fall, sang carols in the winter, and ran from family pool to family pool in the spring. Sometimes we played tag in the street. Most of our time was spent exploring backyards and climbing fences and trees. The environment was nurturing, encouraging exploration and discovery. I loved riding my bicycle up and down the dips in the road, canoeing on the lake behind Julia’s house, watching the tree outside my bedroom window change its colors each fall, singing at the top of my lungs (asking Julia if I might be a great soprano some day), and stepping outside at 6 a.m. with the rest of the neighborhood to stand and stare to the east as the space shuttle took off into an orange sky.
Though the houses and backyards of our neighborhood provided endless entertainment, what happened inside these houses was more important. The most memorable home for me was the Smith house, up on the hill above ours. This was the home where I slept, blissfully unaware, the night my mother went into labor in 1990. I woke up the next morning to murmurs of “little boy” coming from the Smiths' kitchen.
Even today, I still dream of the neighborhood, as well as the experiences I had there, but mostly, I dream of my house. Sometimes it is reflected perfectly: quaint, two stories with balconies on either side, white, with French doors and green shingles, beige carpeting and low ceilings, turquoise tile and a pink leather couch. And sometimes, the house is a sad shadow of how it used to be: dark, broken, empty, and unused. When I dream of the house in this state, I wake up and want to return to it. I have spoken to my former neighbors, and they tell me I wouldn’t recognize the house from the inside. The three families who have lived there since we moved out have torn down walls, ripped up carpets, and re-painted. It’s their right; it’s their house. But my home -- the house I once lived in -- is still clear in my mind.
The neighborhood has changed, as all things do. The homes have been repainted, the roads flawlessly paved, and when the children explore the neighborhood, they have new jungle gyms to play on. As Stonewood edges toward that craved perfection typical of the times, it travels further from that image I still hold of it in my heart, with all the dear imperfections that I loved. Not all of the memories are beautiful, but they are, indelibly, mine.
