I got in the car after ballet class when I was eleven years old. My sister was in the car too, which was very out of the ordinary. She looked at my mom and asked, “Can I tell her?” My mom nodded, and my sister proceeded to say, “Mom and Dad bought the house on Robert S.” I immediately burst into tears. I knew what this meant. It meant that we were moving. Even though this move was literally only three blocks away, it meant we were leaving the street that I grew up on. We were moving away from the only street I actually remember living on, and I was devastated.
I remember being five years old and looking at houses right after we moved to California. I remember doing cartwheels across what would have been a bedroom had there been furniture inside. I remember thinking that this house was perfect. I remember the pink tulips that lined my bedspreads. I remember loving how I had two twin beds in my room, even though I was the only one who slept in it. I remember how I begged for bunk beds because I wanted so badly to sleep on the top bunk; and when I got them, I only slept on the bottom. I remember how my closet doors were floor-length mirrors and the way they shook the night there was an earthquake. I remember the corner where I kept all of my dolls and their clothes and furniture. I remember how the room was half-painted green, and my mom knew we were moving so she never finished. I remember having to pack that room up into boxes, knowing I would never see a lot of the things inside ever again. My mom had gotten all new furniture to go along with our new house. Things needed to look nice is what she told us, but I was sad that I had to say goodbye to my beloved bunk beds.
Hillview Drive was the perfect street for an elementary school aged kid to grow up on. Across the street and four houses down, a girl named Melissa, who’s age fell right in between my sister’s and mine lived. Next door to her were four boys, across the street from her were another four boys, and next to them, another two. All thirteen kids were around the same age, which made for so much fun after school, on weekends, and especially in the summers. Our mom’s would plan out Christmas presents, so one year every kid got roller blades, and another we all got scooters. We would have bike races, climb trees, and genuinely just be kids together.
One summer, one of the boys got the great idea that he would throw a water balloon at the girls. This was how water fights became a ritual. It was always boys against girls, which was not fair at all since there were ten boys and only three girls, but we all had fun anyway. We all had squirt guns and would get on our bikes and chase each other down, and at the end, we would go jump in someone’s pool. This was also the summer that my sister and I finally got new bikes. I got a red 21-speed schwinn bike, and my sister got the exact same one, only hers was purple. During one of the street wide water fights, I was riding my new red schwinn bike and hit one of those blue reflectors in the road and fell and slid on my knee and got pretty scraped up. I remember proudly wearing shorts with my bandaged knee on the first day of school that year.
Sporadically, Melissa, my sister, and I would set up a lemonade stand. We would alternate who’s yard we would have it in, and post signs all over the street advertising our $0.25 a glass freshly made lemonade. While tips were really our only form of income, these lemonade stands are some of my greatest memories. The three of us set up other ways of making money too. We started a detective agency, and of course, our mothers hired us to figure out who stole their missing sweater, or where all of the cookies had gone.
After I found out we were moving, I had another four years in my house while our new one was being remodeled. During those four years all ten boys moved, and new families came in with younger kids. Melissa, my sister and I were the big kids now. We had sleepovers instead of water wars and were in junior high school. We no longer had lemonade stands and we started babysitting instead of solving crimes for money. When I was fifteen we finally moved. All of my childhood was left on Hillview drive, but I did not really realize all I was leaving behind until later. Our new street was much quieter, and all of the kids there were late high school or starting college.
Sitting in our white Toyota land cruiser after ballet, crying, I realized what would be left behind if my family moved. Through the building and remodeling process, I lost sight of how important our street had been in shaping the person I became. My childhood was like the ones you see in movies where everyone on the street is friends and all of the kids play together on the street. I am so grateful that I got to experience an amazing childhood where we could all play and have no worries or cares about what would happen next. I still drive down Hillview drive often and see my old house, now remodeled, but it still has the same huge palm tree out front. Now there is a new group of kids growing up on my old street. I love getting to see them play, even if it is only in passing glances as I drive down the street. It truly makes me happy that kids are still playing and enjoying the same things that we did growing up.
