The kids on our block.

As I drove up the street, I was struck with the barrenness. 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon: no ball playing, no skateboards. The neighborhood had grown up. Looking to the east and then to the west, not one car, not one person.

In the front yard across the street, our flag was waving in the air with Ireland’s colors below it.

My friend lives there. Friends come to us in different ways, at different times in our lives.

I will miss her.

She cuts my hair, prays for me. Her husband shovels my snow if he can beat me to it. He seals my leaking pipes.

She was a child when I moved here in 72. She once purposefully threw a ball at my youngest daughter’s head. I saw her take aim. On a spring day in the 80’s she was terribly rude to me and her mother shouted, “Get in that house! You’re grounded for a week!”

She was going to grow up and be a tramp! I am psychic and I was sure.

She has four children and will soon be a grandma.

The house next to her parent’s became available around the time of her first marriage.

She has lived her entire life on this block.

She has had cancer twice. Her first husband abused her; this husband is a nice person.

A gust of wind from nowhere. The white stripes of our flag and the yellow and white of Irelands’ dance off the cloth as the sun pierces through.

I realize that there is food to get into the house.

I came here a mother of two. However, I was myself, a child.

The streets were daily filled with children playing and fighting and sneaking cigarettes while others watched out for the trusting adults.

The only child left is my friend’s thirteen year old, a daughter who is now walking up the street, her backpack laden with books, her blond hair swishing as she listens to her IPod.

Seventeen kids grew up on this block. There are now twenty-three grandchildren.

None of them mine.

Of the six boys-one has simply disappeared. There is a psychologist, bank manager, hotel manager, and newspaper editor and construction worker.

When the construction worker was 10, he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. By fifteen, he was cancer free and a notorious delinquent. He became a full-blown alcoholic and drug abuser and got sober only 15 years ago. He now lives quietly with a woman whom he met in AA. Every year his parents have an open house on his anniversary. No booze allowed.

When he was nineteen he also became addicted to me. A classic crush. He’d help me with my groceries. He would report seeing my cat three blocks away. “Should I go get him-that’s far.” He was my protector when the 12 year old next door started throwing garbage in my back yard after I huffed about him playing his drums with the windows open. I witnessed, “You better stop.” The boy stood in wide-eyed terror. “You better stop and if anything ever happens to her. I’ll just plain kill you!”

His mother and I spent a lot of time on the phone that summer.

The boy in the house next to him was quite brilliant-he‘s the editor. He was an abused child. During an exceptionally hot day, I asked him why he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. I knew that little boys insisted upon dressing themselves.

“I, I am ok.” he responded, looking remorseful, rubbing his covered arms. I knew in that very second. I made a call. That family lived on the block for thirty more years. They never spoke to me again.

He got inebriated the night of his bachelor party and came pounding on our side door around 4am. My husband ran down. He returned and told me, that the now grown man, apologized for being drunk but for years had wanted to thank us. “He said that we had saved his life hon.”

The psychologist and bank manager are brothers. One is divorced and the other married a woman with two gravely disabled children. Never seemed to be anything remarkable about him when he was a kid.

Of the girls from our block eight are mothers. There are amongst them: an author, home health aide, a doctor, TV reporter, cosmetician, nurse, lawyer, social worker and English teacher.

There have been two grandchildren born out of wedlock, three abortions of which I was personally privy, and at least six miscarriages.

Two of the original seventeen live out of state. One in Seattle, the other in Florida. Only now do I see the extremes.

All of them are said to be financially stable.

I know nothing of their religious or spiritual practices except that one lived in an ashram for many years.

Must get into the house. It’s not all that warm out here.

There have been two divorces. And, I am aware of a marriage of convenience as both partners are said to be gay. I never had an inkling.

Of the original seventeen, three remain unmarried: two women and one of the guys.

We don’t know anything about the boy who disappeared however; there were early rumors that he committed suicide when he first went off to college.

We became conditioned to simply forget his existence when speaking with his family.

Managed to get my shopping into the kitchen. The blinds are drawn. It’s somewhat dark. It's also quite chilly I tend to put the heat down when I leave the house for extended periods of time.

Soon, I will leave it forever.

The eldest of the seventeen is a woman; still feels funny to call them women. She wanted to become a plastic surgeon but let go of her dream when her husband received a prestigious position at a renowned hospital. Ah! The ever-sacrificing wife. She’s a gerontologist and according to her mother her mood varies from depression to extreme glee.

The youngest of the seventeen has just given birth to her second set of twins. I see her on occasion when she visits her parents. Bobbing in and out, first the five year olds then the infants one after another.

I will leave this house, this country, by summer.

I will take them all with me.

Copyright © 2009 by m.m.sugar