“Digging to China”: The Other Kind of Letting Go

Here I am, around age 4, in the West Orange house.

I can still name most of the families in the old neighborhood: the Slaines and Blaines, the Trezzas, the Worobs. Mindy Miller and Melinda Dorling a couple of blocks away. Steve Fleischman, playing chess. Cary Metz, who fell off the swingset and had the “wind” knocked out of him. A girl named Sarah who used to stay with her relatives who had horses.

But I’ve lost, for the moment, the name of the elderly lady who used to give us chocolate Easter bunnies. She was up the hill, between the riding stables and the farm that grew rhubarb and sold eggs. [An hour later: I think it was Miss Howe.]

All of this took place not up here in Vermont, where I’ve lived my adult life, but in West Orange, New Jersey, maybe 12 miles from Manhattan as the seagull flies. Now that I’m approaching 70, maybe someone from “down there” will want to catch my memories at some point. I store them just fine, because they don’t need shelf space or a closet.

A real estate photo — wow, the staircase looks just the same! (see above)

Sandboxes and Holes in the Ground

In the 1950s, most kids where I grew up had a sandbox in the back yard. You could buy one that came with a floaty sort of cotton awning that would age and shred. Or…