Dick*

I think I was five years old the last time my dad and I had an argument. My dad is, for the most part, a serious looking man with a good pokerface. However, being half Italian and half German, when his temper flares he suddenly becomes an animated caricature of his usual sober self. His stance widens, knees slightly bent so he can bounce a bit to the rhythm of his yelling and carrying on, his arms wildly gesturing as his voice rises with his temperature. The sudden change in demeanor would crack me up as a kid and I ended up laughing hysterically even as he was trying to scold me. He eventually gave up yelling at me, finally realizing his attempts at punishing a giggling five year old were futile. We've gotten along ever since.

My dad is an old Air Force guy. He used to take us shooting in the woods where he would set up beer cans for us to fire at. I remember one time we had paused so that he could set up more cans, I was holding the pistol with the barrel pointing up as he had instructed. Unfortunately, I had failed to keep my finger off the sensitive trigger and the gun accidently fired straight up in the air. My dad, who may have actually shat himself when the gun went off, hotfooted it back to me all the while trying unsuccessfully to form a comprehensible sentence.

"Give me the...watch what yer...don't hold the...gimme that!"

To his credit, he didn't get angry he just took the gun from my stunned little hand all the while rolling his eyes at me.

My dad liked to mess with my friends all through my teen years. He was a gun enthusiast and had a room in the basement where he would work on restoring and cleaning his collection. He would emerge from the basement, knowing that my friends and I were upstairs playing video games, and stand quietly in the doorway of the family room lovingly stroking a pistol with a grease stained white cloth until one of my friends would turn around and notice him there. My friends often decided they had to go home shortly thereafter.

When I was twelve we moved to a suburban neighborhood where most of the men went off to work everyday in a collared shirt and tie, and spent the weekends around the house in khaki shorts and a polo. My dad worked for the Air Force National Guard and went to work in fatigues and on the weekend could be seen mowing the lawn in ripped up cutoffs, combat boots, and a faded black shirt/jacket thing that was held closed with three ties down the front that he most likely picked up overseas somewhere when he was still in the Air Force.

My dad retired from the National Guard five years ago. His plan was to find a part time job that would give him something to do and yet require him to have only the most minimal responsibilities. It took a few tries since it's in his nature to take on responsibilities (his opinion is that people are idiots and if you want it done right, do it yourself) but he finally found something he enjoyed that only took up a few hours at a time. My dad is now a hot air balloon wrangler. His job, along with a couple of other guys, is to get the balloon and basket set up and then hop in his truck and follow the balloon across the southern end of the county until the pilot finds an open farm field to land in. Then they wrangle in the balloon, deflate it and pack it up. Think of it as a tamer version of tornado chasing. He's quite fond of the job and it allows my mom and him to go on their camping trips whenever they want. It also allows him to enjoy his other favorite past time, military reenactments. Because what else is a retired military man supposed to do with his time?

What else can I say, the man's a legend.

(*yes, that's my dad's name. It shouldn't come as a surprise that most of my friends were perfectly happy calling him Mr. Dunkle)

My Mother, My Friend

My mom and I had what I would call your average mother/daughter relationship when I was growing up. We never had the screaming and slamming doors fights that I occasionally witnessed between some of my friends and their mothers nor did we have the close "sit down with a cup of tea and chat" mother-daughter bond that I knew could exist. We had our disagreements but they were typically short-lived. For the most part we got along although I rarely shared with her when it came to boys, peer pressure, sex and the like. It wasn't that she was oblivious to my teenage world, it was more that she let my sister and me be independent but if we screwed up (and we certainly did) then she got involved. I sometimes wanted to tell her about my crush on a certain boy or the fight I had with a girlfriend but mostly she wanted to hear about my schoolwork or my dance classes so the rest I divulged to my older sister who I relied on heavily to commiserate with over teenage girl things. The one time that I can recall discussing my personal life with mom was senior year of high school when I was spending a lot of time alone, as it seemed my friends had decided to exclude me for some unknown reason. She wanted to know why I was sitting at home on Friday night, why I didn't call Aimee or Jen or Kristin so I filled her in. Her response, stated in a much more "momly" way of course, was basically "fuck 'em". It was probably the first time I felt that she understood my life.

We could only take each other in small doses, putting some distance between my mom and me from time to time was essential. Once I went away to college, we seemed to enjoy our time together more but by the end of a weekend visit we would start snapping at each other and I knew it was time to be on my way. I realize now that it was probably because we were much more similar than I was willing to admit. I knew I could never move back in with my parents after college the way my sister did to save money and pay off bills. Instead, my sister and I got an apartment together and I immediately started making plans to move to New York. I knew I would miss my family when I moved but I figured it wouldn't affect my mom any differently than when I left for college. There was no resistance from her when I announced my move, no "my baby is leaving" sentiment. The move itself went smoothly, save for a massive thunderstorm that rolled in while we were unloading the U-Haul, but as my parents climbed in their car to make the drive back to Pennsylvania my mom looked at me and simply said "I'm really gonna miss you." It was the first time she had ever said anything so poignant and the tears rolled down my face as I watched them drive away.

That was a changing day in my relationship with my mom and I looked forward to the visits she made, day trips either with my dad for sightseeing or with my sister so she could take us shopping. I was slowly seeing her has more than just my mother who would get angry when I got a B- in algebra II or left my shoes on the steps instead of taking them to my room. I saw that we could get along, maybe not in the same way as other mothers and daughters, but we definitely could. So when I decided to take a surf trip to Mexico for my 28th birthday I invited her to come with me. And she accepted. Just me and mom, and we had so much fun. Everyone in the surf group thought she was adorable and told me over and over how great she was. And I agreed. Sure, she drove me nuts a few times (whose mother doesn't?) but those instances paled in comparison to the surfing, horseback riding and margarita drinking. She told me again and again how impressed she was by my surfing ability and I could tell that she really meant it. But no one was more impressed than me. I was impressed that this woman, at 57 years old, hopped on a surfboard with no hesitation, did early morning yoga every day and giggled over the cute guy with the puppy that I befriended one evening. I was impressed that we finally had become friends.

(My mom, surfing Sayulita, Mexico, January 2005)

Memory Lane

I have no stories to tell of eccentric neighbors, no tales of odd people or strange happenings. But I have a story to tell. I have the story of the neighbors of my youth, the story of the people who defined the word neighbor to me.

I will never have neighbors like the neighbors I had growing up on Virginia Avenue, of this I am sure. It was a small, quiet street in the city of Lancaster only one block long surrounded by busy streets on all sides. Our house, where I lived until I was 12 years old, was a brick semi-detached house with a small sloping front yard situated in the middle of the block. Most of the other houses on the block were some variation of ours; some had front porches while others had sunrooms, a few had the added luxury of a small garage in the back. It was the type of neighborhood where the kids could safely play in the street and the adults could wander down the street, afternoon drink in hand, to gab with the people sitting on their porch.

The people were a mix of older retired couples, families with high school and college aged kids, and many young families. The couple who lived in the other half of our house were Mr. and Mrs. Stiely, an older retired couple. I remember very little about Mr. Stiely, he always seemed gruff and uninterested in the kids of the neighborhood, although he would chat with my dad from time to time. Mrs. Stiely was the opposite of her husband, very kind and friendly to my sister and me. She would often offer us lemonade or cookies. We would feed her fish when they went away. I was intrigued by their home, full of knick knacks, doilies and crocheted quilts. It was full of, well, stuff but it never seemed cluttered. Everything had a place. It always reminded me of a Grandma's house.

Our neighbors to the other side were the Atheys. They were a family with older kids, although I can only remember one by name. Eric Athey was probably about ten years older than me and played in a band which made him undeniably cool. What made him even cooler was that he tolerated all the younger kids in the neighborhood. He would sit out on their front porch playing his guitar and when we inevitably arrived to pester him he would play songs that we could sing along to, letting one of us strum the guitar with the pick while he held down the chords. His band would practice in their basement in the evenings. On warm summer nights my friends, my sister and I would gather around one of the open basement windows and listen to them play. They knew we were out there, sitting on the sidewalk between our two houses in the dark. Eric would make up song titles to the songs they were about to play and announce them, "this next song is the Krissy-Katie-Megan-Missy-Jackie song" and we would giggle with sheer joy that the older boys were paying attention to us.

Across the street from us were the Martinos. The Martinos had two kids that we played with, Missy was a year older than me and Scotty was a year younger. Their dad was a geeky city politician guy who thought it was funny when he referred to us girls as "boys" and the boys as "girls". Their mom, on the other hand, was what my dad would refer to as "a looker". She typically dressed to show off her figure and usually complemented her look with full make up and jewelry. I was always dumbfounded by the fact that Missy and Scotty were allowed to leave the dinner table after taking just two bites of their meal and rejoin the rest of the neighborhood kids playing outside only to go in later and eat dessert. My parents (whose philosophy on parenting was vastly different) disagreed with this behavior and a few others, like Scotty's incessant climbing on things he wasn't supposed to (like trees, cars, roofs) and Missy's tendency to wear whatever she felt like despite the outside temperature. Still, when my great-grandmother who lived with us fell and broke her hip, it was Mrs. Martino who scooped up me and my sister and took us across the street to their house while my parents called the ambulance. I remember she let us watch what was happening from the door.

Next door to the Martinos were the Randalls. The Randalls had a son about six or seven years older than me and a son who was a year younger. Being a family with only boys, my parents probably associated with them more than my sister and I did but, in a strange twist, six months after we moved away from Virginia Avenue the Randalls bought a house in our new neighborhood and moved in behind us. Since neither we nor the Randalls knew many people in the neighborhood our families became closer and we saw a lot more of them in later years than in our years on Virginia Avenue. They still live behind my parents today.

Like most of the streets in the city, we had an alley behind our house and considered the families "across the alley" our neighbors as well. This is where my best friend Megan's family, the Decks, lived. I remember my mom and Sue Deck spending summers sitting on the front porch or in the backyard of one of our homes, chatting and drinking iced tea. Our families had "game nights" together where we would play Trivial Pursuit and Scattegories. I considered their house a second home and they were, by far, our closest neighbors.

The family beside the Decks were the Retalicks. They had four girls, Lisa, Ginny, Diane and Kathleen who all used to babysit for us. Next to them were the Wilsons who I started babysitting for shortly before we moved. The Wilsons had a swingset in their backyard and anyone could come and play on it, even if they weren't home. Looking back, I realize now how many people we knew in our little neighborhood. Miss Dehaven across the street gave me and my sister piano lessons. She was the first adult woman I knew who had never been married. There was an older gay couple next to Miss Dehaven, although it wasn't until years later that I found out they were gay. It just never occurred to me as a child. The Weavers were a family younger than ours, two doors down. I used to spend hours at their home playing with their two little girls.

Every summer we would get permission from the city to close off the street and we would have a huge neighborhood block party. It was the highlight of the summer. We would wait eagerly all day for it to start and then at 3pm the city trucks would arrive with the barricades. Grills would be fired up, baby pools would be filled with ice for soda and beer. Coolers full of hamburgers and hotdogs sat beside picnic tables full of salads, veggie trays and potato chips. Everyone brought out their folding tables and lawn chairs and set up in the street. There was music playing. Neighbors from "across the alley" were included in the block party. The parents organized games and activities for the kids. My mom's face painting station was my favorite. As the evening wore on and more beer was drunk, the men would drag the coolers out into the street as makeshift "goals" and play kick-the-can. We never wanted it to end.

I hope that one day I will again have neighbors that I feel as close to as those first neighbors, but I doubt it. I knew them in a very specific point in time, a time that seems almost surreal. The people of Virginia Avenue are etched into my memory from a child's point of view. My memories are some of the most simplistic, most mundane moments, some that I couldn't put into words if I tried. I hope that my story has brought a hint of nostalgia to you, the reader. I hope that you've enjoyed my walk down memory lane, or as I call it, Virginia Avenue.