Life changed in the new neighbothood. It was quieter and more affluent - only we weren't...affluent that it. Mom and Dad kept me in the Catholic Elementary School in the old neighborhood - so I went to school with one group of kids, lived near another and didn't fit in either place. There were no kids running around in the streets or jumping rope on the sidewalk...they played quietly in each other's back yards...and ignored me, the Italian Catholic girl who didn't go to their school. It hurt being snubbed regularly, but I learned to keep quiet and pretend to ignore it. At some point I made friends with three or four boys who attended the same Catholic school I did...Johnny Rebhann, Jimmy Grennen, Tommy McMahon and sometimes Kevin Heath Kevin was orphaned after a few years and went to live with relatives in Michigan. It felt so strange to have a friend with no parents. It was hard during the times when the boys would go through a "girls are yucky" stage - but they ultimately became the source of some limited experimentation (I hated being the "victim" of the "TV game" as the boys called it), my first kiss (Jimmy...I was 14 and devastated to later learn that the only reason he kissed me was to win a bet among them as to who could get kissed first; I tried to get him to "like" me for years after that) and my first boyfriend (Johnny...I was 14 and had had a crush on him since the second grade).
When I was eleven, Mom had a surprise pregnancy and I got a baby brother just before my twelfth birthday. It was exciting at first - brought out my nurturing qualities. I learned to change diapers, feed and burp and rarely went anywhere without the baby carriage. After a while it got old, but the bond was established...really more mother-child than big sister-little brother. It remains that way to this day.
Day to day life was not particularly memorable. Glen and I tended to stay out of Dad's way as his moods were volatile...though I was better at that than Glen was. For the few years that Amy was with us, I was enamoured of her life and crazy about her boyfriend, Richie. She introduced me to rock 'n' roll and taught me how to dance, but she left home when I was about ten.
As time went on, I made a few girlfriends...Nettie Roos, the Dutch only child whose Mom was six feet tall, rode every where on a bicycle and taught us how to do Eeeny, Meeny, Miney Moe in Dutch; Alene Zully, the oldest of five sisters was my friend in the sixth grade but then moved away to Oyster Bay; Carol Lee Pallin, my friend in the seventh and eighth grades, hung out with me and the boys and became Tommy's girlfriend for a little while.
High school days rolled around and things changed again. I found a Best Friend. Mary Anne Rotolo was a year behind me in school, but she lived in my neighborhood and went to the same Catholic HS I did. We became inseperable and were often taken for sisters with our dark Italian good looks and long black hair - only I am 5'3" and she is 5'10" - we were a female Mutt and Jeff! She was from a large family that welcomed me with open arms. I spent a lot of time there during my HS years and had a mad crush on her brother, Joey.
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| 74 Superior Road Bellerose, New York |
My parents sold the house and moved south decades ago, but I can still see the interior like it was yesterday. I have good memories and bad memories of those fourteen years...and more as I returned often with my babies to visit. Thanksgivings around the dining room table...and the trees on the dining room wallpaper. My grandparents all sitting out in lawn chairs in the backyard...conversation suspended every time a train went by. Glen and I in the yard waving at the engineers...cheering if they waved back. A slap in the face from Dad when I was fourteen - I didn't speak to him for a week and he never did it again. Mom bathing my new son in the kitchen sink. Dead birds in the chimmney and bugs in the carpet - I was glad to see the ugly green carpet go. So much green in that house, I did not use green in my own house for almost forty years! Grandmommy fallng in the basement and breaking her hip. My first baby shower held in the living room. A quickie with my fiance` in the basement when everyone else was asleep. The mailman shouting through the screen door when an airmail letter arrived for me from my Marine boyfriend. Guys subjected to the third degree when they came to take me on dates. Denting the rear corner of the house with Mom's car when I came up the driveway too fast - Mom thought it was an earthquake - I thought life as I knew it was over - but Dad was surpisingly calm about it. Hiding at the top of the stairs as a kid listening to Mom and Dad fight. The conversation in the kitchen when I told Mom and Dad I was getting married. And another conversation a few years later in the same kitchen, when they told me they were thinking about getting a divorce (the divorce never came to be). So many things helped shape the woman I am today...
...always hoping for a red caboose.
