140/365 Spend the Night

When I think back to "idyllic childhood upbringing location" I always think of Orangewood. It's the street name--that is how my family refers to the house we lived in when I was in 3rd and part of 4th grade. But in my mind, we lived there for 8 or 9 years. No neighborhood would compare until I moved here.

It was a cul-de-sac and one of the family had painted kickball bases and pitcher's mound in the circle. Start with that. There was one girl my age on the block, Patti, who was never a good friend but she was an available friend. Her brother Matt, kind of a rat-fink of a kid, was my brother's age. There was an older boy, Geoff, who played with them long after that should have been boring. But whatever. When I put it on paper, it obviously cannot compare to what my kids have here. But we had similar rituals of trick-or-treating and spend-the-night. Patti and I spent the night at each other's houses a lot, mostly in my basement, which to call finished would be not quite correct.

Fiona spent the night at Bree's house last night and came home this morning before tae kwon do and didn't seem too tired. But she was. Crabby by dinnertime and whiny by bedtime. Just like I remember being when we lived on Orangewood.

Later--on Fairwick or in Columbia, there would be spend-the-night events, but they were always school friends. There just weren't neighbor kids.

The one nice thing about Patti (seriously, she was kind of a user and she was the third girl in a row in a family that really just wanted one boy so she had an ego the size of a thimble) was that she didn't go to my school. 3rd grade was a really difficult year for me, having essentially skipped 2nd grade (I moved from the middle of 1st to the middle of 2nd). Instead of being the smartest kid in class, I looked like the kid who had to go to 2nd grade for catechism. And being a year behind in a classroom that is rigid about ages (as opposed to montessori, for instance) is socially impossible. It was good to come home and be able to just hang with Patti. I caught up by 5th grade--but by then we'd moved and I had school friends and probably wouldn't have hung out with Patti anymore anyway.

That's the difference: I see Fiona with Bree and Eliza for a long time. Iris less so, since she's busier and doesn't wander up to play as often. We'll see how the school year progresses. But Bree and Eliza seem firm for now. I hope so.