Coming of Age at Christmas
As I look back on that day, it was a real coming of age type of day. I remember clearly standing by the front window of the subway as we rode back to our home in Brooklyn. We lived for two years on Fort Hamilton Parkway. I didn’t like living there. I missed PS 94 and 53 rd Street. It was the world I had always known. I knew each house and at least a little something about the people who lived there. I knew to walk fast when I passed the tenements and to walk near the curb if I walked past the bar on the odd side of the street near 5 th Avenue. I suppose it was because we never had alcohol in the house and because of how my parents felt about it that I was always nervous walking past a bar. I think I thought someone might reach out and grab me and I’d never be seen again. It was a lonely trip back to Brooklyn. I don’t remember why my father wasn’t with us. I was at an age where I was beginning to have those inevi...