A Staten Island Minute

My parents moved back to New York when I was 2 and we settled into an apartment in Staten Island.  Our apartment was at the top of a flight of very steep stairs.  I was allowed to neither descend nor ascend these stairs on my own.  I remember riding my tricycle in the parking lot behind the apartment building by myself.  Strange how I was not allowed to go up some stairs by myself but it was okay to, literally, play in traffic.  We had a balcony that housed a small plastic pool in the summer months.  The pool eventually blew away in a storm leaving me devastated.  I was probably jealous of it's escape and it's subsequent freedom.

I started preschool at the Staten Island JCC when I was 3.  I'm sure my mother saw this as the first step to  my master's degree  but she refrained from lecturing me about grad school until I was at least in 5th grade.  I loved preschool.   It was fun.  I had friends, I played, we had Kool Aid and Oreos.  My teachers were sweet and attentive and maternal.  We sang songs, we danced, there was a play kitchen.  My best friend was a girl named Stacy.  Her mom sold Tupperware. My mother would never be bothered with something so "menial" as Tupperware.  She had a finished basement and a brother named David. They had pitchers of lemonade in their refrigerator and a cookie jar.  I spent a lot of time there.  It was so different from my house.  In my house we had Sanka instant coffee and Manischewitz gefilte fish in jars.  Stacy's house was so much more fun and way cooler.  I grew up in other people's houses. I always gravitated towards friends who had these big families, watched the Donny and Marie Show together and  played board games on Sunday night.   I knew my family was different even at a very young age.  I didn't know how yet but I did know I'd rather be somewhere else than where I was.

My mother said she used to take me on the Staten Island Ferry but I have no memories of this.  I wish I could conjure up glamorous images of me and my mother sailing the Upper New York Bay but I don't have any.  We moved to the midwest when I was 4.  I would return to New York yearly since that was where every other member of my family resided.  It would remain a huge part of my life until my 20's when I stopped going on a regular basis and instead headed west to find a home.  I would love to go back one day, find the apartment in Staten Island and go up and down that flight of stairs.  By myself.