Missing Growing Up In Queens

Today's May challenge task is to write about something that I miss.  It could be a person, a thing, a place or a time of your life.  Well what I miss is growing up in Queens, NY.   When I look back on that time it was full of fun, happiness and love.

I miss walking to school each day with mom holding my hand and my sister running up in front of us.  I miss coming home from school and smelling the aroma's of my mom's awesome cooking. I miss summers on 65th Street in Middle Village were my sister and I would leave the house after breakfast to play with friends, stop back for lunch and then be out again until dinner.  On really hot days we would sit on each others front stoops reading piles of comic books that we had already read over and over before.  Sometimes we would pool together our pennies and make our way down to the corner candy store where as a group we would pick out a new Archie comic book rush back home and take turns reading it. On not so hot days my sister and I would  roller skate up and down the hill having to quickly move to the side when a car came.   In the evening after dinner all the kids on the street boys and girls alike would congregate and play endless hours of Red Rover or Hide and Seek while the grown ups would sit outside and talk until it was time to call us all in for bed.

65th St looking down the hill my house was on the left.

I miss the huge snowstorms that we would sometimes get that closed schools and we could play in the street that was covered in feet of snow without worry of cars, before the plows came through.

Snowstorms in Queens, more fun for kids then adults.

I miss trick or treating when we could go without parents because there was no threat of people trying to harm us.  After we would all go to a Halloween party in the Stark family basement where we would bob for apples and the lights were turned off while scary stories were read.

I miss Christmas's when I still believed in Santa Claus and woke up to all the presents under the tree.  I miss the big holiday meal that followed, including my grandparents, aunts and cousins.

Mostly I miss my mother who has now been gone for many years.  Time moves on and now have raised my own children and I watch as they raise their children and hope that their memories of childhood were as happy as mine were.

Mary Ann