the little girl atop englewood hill

In 3rd grade, I lived on Englewood Drive, atop a hill that careened quite sharply downwards for many blocks.

At the very bottom of that hill was a gated walkway sandwiched between houses, leading to the playground of my elementary school. Children of the neighborhood funneled out of their respective side streets onto Englewood Drive every morning, where they converged into friend lumps and descended down the hill like schools of fish. One particularly winter-y winter, the ice was so thick we slid all the way down the street to the catwalk, using the bottoms of our shoes as skates.

On the way home from school, I often walked an undetectable distance behind a popular boy named Chris Lawson. He lived a quarter way up the hill on a man-made lake, dotted with houses much larger than I’d ever lived in, filled with people who owned jet skis. My unrequited love for him occupied much real estate in a puffy diary, dotted with multi-colored hearts, that I wrote in every day.

There was a creek running into the lake, which flowed under the Englewood Street overpass, where I once stuck my umbrella in rushing rain waters, and emerged with bloodied knees after being dragged along the cement by the force of the current.

Up the creek a little further, where the bed turned from cement to dirt, there was a park with an ancient weeping willow. In the summer, my best friend Tara and I would spend entire afternoons swinging from the branches in the shade of that tree. On one occasion, dismounting directly into the creek, where we quickly learned of the leeches that dwelled there. (I’d never run home faster)

Tara lived on my block, down the hill and around the corner. I could see her backyard from my backyard, and could get there by scaling a few fences.

Tara’s house was much more fun than mine, and so I spent most of my time there. She had a giant trampoline, bedroom walls lined with Guns N’ Roses posters, a closet with a secret doorway in the back, and a 16-year-old sister who I thought was so mature and cool. I didn’t have any older siblings, just two much younger brothers, and I’d never known a teenager before. She couldn’t have cared less about me, of course. But I couldn’t wait to grow up and drive a car like her.

It was Tara's sister and my little-girl notion of age I thought of this morning, as I woke up to a brand new October, in which I turn 47. I’m not far from the age my grandmother was when I was a third grader living on top of that hill. Through my little-girl eyes, she was a very old woman, and Tara’s sister was the ultimate goal.

When I look in the mirror, I see the years that have marched across my face, but I do not feel old. I feel like I know more than ever before, and somehow, also, less. Millions of dollars wouldn’t even begin to lure me back to the teenage years I once romanticized. I feel as if I’ve lived countless lives with identities in the multitudes. And yet, in many ways, I feel not much different than the little girl standing at the apex of Englewood Drive, setting her baby brother on a skateboard, preparing to push him face-first down the hill.

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