Growing up, I had a finished basement, a huge fenced in back yard and my parents knew all of our neighbors because we all went to school together, same summer camp, same recreation teams. I loved my suburban community, northwest of Detroit, Oak Park, Michigan.

Ms. Palaccio kept my youngest sister until I got home from school and she made the best zucccini bread. Even though my grandmother had a beautiful garden in the heart of Detroit, full of her Mississippi-reared faves (the green tomatoes were the bomb), I didn’t know what a zuccini was. Two doors down from Ms. Palaccio were the Carters. David and I got into my first fight at school when he accidentally hit me in the face with a snowball. I went off! He started crying because he thought we were friends and he begged for my forgiveness for…uh…the whole next semester. They adopted their cousin, Butter, and he throw a baseball in my parent’s bedroom window. Oooh, that was the first time I realized that my father had a gun in the house. AAAAHHHH! He was half-dressed, getting ready for his afternoon shift at the post office, and he grabbed that gun from the back of his closet and ran out the porch. My sisters and I were crying and all of the other kids on the block immediately busted Butter out. He had to work in our yard, in our garage, hell, he was an indentured servant for a good year.

I loved growing up in Oak Park. Just thinking about it makes me sad that my children may never have that. See times are a’changing, actually they have changed. And DH wrote a little bit about this in his post yesterday. I decided to sorta fill in the blanks. Read the rest of this entry »