Sounds Like Heaven

Childhood Memory

Sounds Like Heaven

A friend asked me a while back about one of my favorite memories of childhood hobbies.   When I told her, she smiled, "It sounds like Heaven". 

When my mind wanders there now, it has that title.  I see myself from a distance, an aerial view, like excerpts from a movie. I don't remember any other person or activity. It's bright and sunny and happy. It's summer.  I have my library card in my pocket. I'm walking to the library.   I'm young - how young? Junior High School age? Elementary school?  I walk down Batchelder St, onto Shore Pkwy, past Brown St, Haring and onto Nostrand, across Shore Pkwy North of the Belt, then past Voorhies, Ave Z, Ave Y, and Ave W?  Or maybe it was between Ave V and Ave W.  I should look up the address.    

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(Shore Pkwy) ..Brown....Haring....Nostrand..(Shore Pkwy North)....Voorhies...Ave Z....Ave Y....Ave X...Ave W?...Library

I would read the back cover, sometimes look at the cover picture, stack them up and check them out. The librarian would put my gray and white library card in the back pocket and I would head home.

Did I carry it home in a toppling stack, like the cartoon picture in my head, or did they give me a bag?  Did I feel hot in the blazing sun?   There are no memories of discomfort or any negative thought.

The frame jumps to me walking from my house two blocks (short ones, not avenue blocks) to the store, without the books. I guess I dropped the books off at home?  I would buy the 14 oz giant bag of mnms plain or peanut, or blowpops, at the little store on Emmons and Ford. Was it still Patsy's or did it change to Noel's by that time?  What is it called now?  I'll have to look that up. I have memories of the cashier expecting me and handing me the bag of mnms as I walked into the store.  The price $3.39 comes to mind.  Wonder if that really was the price?  At  home I took my giant candy bag and stack of books up the stairs to the second floor apartment, climbed out the kitchen window across the fire escape onto a balcony type of roof covered by sheet metal with seams sealed with tar melting in the hot sun and I read my books, one after another, with my bag of candy. 

Where were my sisters, my brother, my parents?  What was with all that candy?  Was that the year I got my first cavities? That would have been around fifth grade then, because I remember kids who couldn't believe I had never had a cavity before fifth grade.  So I would have been nine/ten, around fifth grade.  If I had access to that apartment, then it was unoccupied at the time.  Adrian had not moved in yet.   I can find out from my father what year Adrian moved in. 

When Adrian moved out two years ago I had the opportunity to show my kids the apartment and the window I climbed through. I'm sure the view through my eyes was quite different than theirs.

Reading endlessly, eating unlimited candy on a high top roof in the summer.  Heaven.