At age twelve, I lived with my parents and my sister. Mom and Dad designed and built our home seven years earlier. I recall a visit there while it was under construction.
“This is your bedroom” Dad announced “and Lisa, this is yours”. We squealed with delight as we ran into the empty rooms, straight to the windows. With nothing but the frames, we leaned out and waved. “What fun” we thought “we’re neighbors!” A novelty to be sure, we’d always shared a room.
The home was on a quiet, tree-lined side street, walking distance from the family business. At it’s end was a park. My aunt, her family and my grandparents lived on the corner and across the street respectively. It shared mix of homes. Some modest, ours was one of the largest.
My lifelong BFF lived around the corner. I’d walk to school with my her, my sister, cousins and neighbor kids. It was so close that often I’d run home from school and eat lunch with Mom.
We had a deep back yard with rolling hills. Dad hung a tree swing in the willow tree, my favorite to climb. By the time I was twelve, he’d had an a-frame treehouse constructed. Incredibly unique, it was “the place” to hangout or have sleep-overs. It also was “home-base” for hide-and-seek. Ours was the best yard in the neighborhood for hiding places you see.
A brick, ranch-style house, it was modern with many striking features. A fieldstone, wrap-around fireplace visible from both the living and family rooms. A sauna Dad installed, inspired following our trip to the Montreal 67 Expo where we’d experienced our first sauna. The finished walk-out basement with thick cream-colored shag carpet, a fire-engine red, free-standing gas fireplace and a bar. That bar top took 3 men to carry in and featured river rocks set in lucite. I’ve never seen another like it.
At age twelve, I got to update my pale pink bedroom. It was the late 60’s. I chose black carpet, black and silver beads for my windows, adding a lime-green Tiffany lamp and matching crushed-velvet chair. A creamy white faux-fur bedspread was the crowning touch. Add a black light and psychedelic posters pinned onto a cork board that Mom covered with black burlap. A seriously cool room for an almost-teen.
I loved that home, the neighborhood, the town. I felt safe there, knew all the neighbors. There were tons of kids the same age. Kickball, softball, sledding, bike riding and the like filled those years. We played outside till dark or later, summoned home when we heard our parents call our names.
I would later become the President of the Chamber of Commerce in this town and chose to live my life here. Thirty years ago I moved into the house that my grandparents built when my Dad was a boy, a home I’d been in as a child. The bonus? It’s walking distance from my childhood home.
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Our Writing 101 assignment for today, was to write about where we lived at age twelve. The twist was to mix long, medium and short sentences.
It is sad that children now cannot go and play all day but have to be driven everywhere and go nowhere alone. They miss out on so much.
So true. As I was writing that I thought how times have changed. I’m grateful to have been a child when I was. Happy memories, simpler times for sure. Thanks Donna!
Sweet and beautiful memories!!
Thank you so much.
This brings back so many beautiful memories. Yes, that was the best neighborhood to grow up in! You have captured its character so beautifully! And your bedroom was to die for!!
Thank you for that, you were certainly part of that time and that neighborhood. In recounting it, I felt so much more grateful than I did in the moment, as is the case when you’re young. It was a really amazing and wonderfully inoccent time in our lives for sure.