Let me elaborate.
We live in a town that screams "Suburbia!" We moved here when I was ten years old. This town consists of five towns, now districts - Niles, Centerville, Mission San Jose, Warm Springs and Irvington - which incorporated in 1956 and became Fremont. Newark declined to join in, and is, looking on a map, the hole of the donut which is Fremont.
I grew up in Mission San Jose, a sort of rich section of town. We lived in a court right down the street from the swim club, and my first job ever was as a lifeguard at the swim club. We knew every other family on that court very, very well, and summer evenings were often spent congregating in the court, with lawn chairs and beer for the adults and lemonade for the kids and the dogs running around (in the days before leash laws) and kids in bathing suits playing and running and just being kids.
I have memories of block parties and summer nights spent in tents on someone's lawn, and dogs, we always had dogs, and living in a Speedo and fishing in the lake which we got to by climbing over a cyclone fence and crossing the railroad tracks, and touch football in the street and never going anywhere without at least four or five companions and *always* sharing the loot we bought with our allowance and as much as I detested my sister, woe betide anyone else who said something awful about her because war would have to be declared and there was always an army willing to fight my wars, as I was ready to fight theirs.
I married a Niles boy, which means I married a Bad Boy from the Wrong Side of the Tracks. Seriously, that's how it was seen, especially by my friends from high school.
For awhile we lived in Warm Springs, on a street right off the main drag of the district, and I worried about my kids getting hit by a car driven by the asshats who used to zoom up and down that street, but for the last 18+ years we've lived in Centerville, in a court, and I shop at the nearby Safeway, where it's an unusual day when I don't run into someone with whom I went to high school, or college, or at least someone I've known for 20 years. People *stay* here. I know families of three or four generations, people who know my parents, people who watched me grow up. I've, more than once, run into my very first boyfriend, looking for ripe avocados at Safeway :). And you know something? He's just as cute as he was when we were at Hopkins Junior High School. But he's Irish and has a dimple in his right cheek, and a smile to make the angels sing, and I am a sucker for dimples.
I've been to an awful lot of funerals, lately. Funerals of people who were part of the village of adults who raised me. I've also been to an awful lot of weddings, lately. Children of my peers. Or of Tim's peers. He grew up here, too. He was two when his family moved to Niles. He's lived here for more than 50 years. If we don't run into someone I grew up with, we run into someone Tim grew up with. It's that kind of place.
I love this aspect of my life. I love living here. On the surface, it's a bland town, a bedroom community, nothing colorful or hip or fascinating or artsy about it. But it's the place I grew up, and I know every square inch of her. I can hike her hills without a map, and know the hidden beautiful places only we natives know. There are memories here of swim teams and ice cream and first real kisses and first sex and doctors who knew me from when I was a kid and midnight bowling and first jobs and my life weaving with other lives, the lives of people who are still here, who have children the age of my children, and we talk, now, of grandchildren.
My youngest son works in the coffee shop in the bowling alley where I used to go midnight bowling on Fridays after we closed the Der Wienerschnitzel where I worked when I was 16. My eldest daughter lives in a house where I used to go to parties when I was at Ohlone Junior College.
So, I live in a court. When we moved here, needing a larger house when Danny was born, there were 18 kids under 12 living here. In nine houses. In two of those houses lived retirees. In one house lived a childless couple.
It was *wonderful*. I was a stay-at-home mom at the time, and I loved every single minute of every single day, with kids running in and out of this house all the time. It was a time when I was the coolest mom on the block because I got through Super Mario Bros with *one* Mario. We were inundated, all the time, with kids. It didn't hurt that we have a swimming pool, and I always had cookies and Cokes and video games and loved every single one of those kids and they knew that I loved having them around and was interested in every joy and every sorrow.
Birthday parties were cacophonous and crowded and crazy and today, when I look at the videotapes of those times (yes, we have video, thank heavens!) I smile, I laugh, I cry. And I want to tell every single person I know that they must capture these moments in any way they possibly can, because those times move on so quickly. You have them right here, in the palm of your hand, and then they're gone.
The older kids loved baby-sitting my kids, not least because I paid outrageously well, so Tim and I were able to get out often, knowing that our children were with people we loved and trusted and who cared about our kids.
At Christmas time Tim would dress up as Santa Claus and as night would fall on Christmas Eve he would walk up and down the court, admonishing the wee ones to go to bed, because he wouldn't visit until they were fast asleep.
There was a time when Halloween was the biggest deal of the year, here, and everyone would decorate elaborately. Those were the days when we'd buy bags and bags of candy, and still, sometimes, we'd run out, because there would be hundreds of kids coming through, More often than not, Halloween evening would be pleasant and warm, and on more than one occasion we would find ourselves, late in the evening, after the influx of costumed kids slowed down to a trickle, on one front porch or another, enjoying a beverage and the company of our neighbors.
There aren't any kids under 12 living on this court anymore. There aren't any kids under *18* living on this court anymore - my Danny is (still) the youngest. One of the retirees is still here, but the other one died, and that house belongs to another family now. I remember, a few years after we first moved in, celebrating Berta's 50th birthday with a block party. She used to help me out by rocking Danny in her rocking chair when he was fussy. He was three months old. Now he's eighteen and in a couple of years it'll be *my* 50th birthday.
Tonight Berta and Tony brought a bottle of wine across the street, after the influx of kids became a trickle, and we sat on my front porch and shared that wine - Viña Concha y Toro's Casillero del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon, in honor of Tim's devilish turn as Jason tonight :). And we shared memories of Halloweens past, and years past, and how quickly it goes by, and how wonderful it's been.
And how much we love living in a court.
