During my annual Christmas night run I decided to spend my 90 minutes touring my old playgrounds. The following is a list of the most memorable spots along the way:
Rolling Hills Swim and Tennis Club: where I spent most of my summers training, competing, sunning, boy watching, flipping burgers and eating Wednesday morning post practice eating donuts
The home of BH: the first boy I ever “slow danced” with (mummy danced more like it)
C’s family’s new home
Fairfield Aquatic Center: where I life-guarded one summer
1866 Doral Drive: our old house, I actually walked around the the backyard to see how different it had changed….no herb garden, no metal swing set, and the place where the dog and I had made our hand/paw prints in the curb had been replaced with new cement.
C’s next door house where I spent a good deal of my childhood playing and my first overnight experience that ended in oreo cookies, milk and a walk across the yard back home because I couldn’t fall asleep.
More high school friends’ homes where I’d hung out in the Hunter Road subdivisions: R’s, S’s, L’s
Harbin Park: I ran the back part of my high school cross country course in the snow. That brought back the freshest memories and a bundle of anxious butterflies thinking back on all the mental toughness that had been tested race after race and training after training. I recalled the summer nature camps, birthday parties, family Sunday picnics, walks with dates, science project research with dad and my first cross country practice where I was made fun of for wearing dangling teal colored earings.
Park, Red Oak, Evalie, Pleasant, Rolling Hills roads,: I ran past house after house where I had played and tried to grow up
A’s house: team mud fight and pool parties, M’s house: talent show dance rehearsals, R’s house: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun movie and slumber parties, L’s house: her big sister’s Cyndi Lauper music and learning that a screen door is not an exit through a failed trial
South Elementary School: the biggest playground ever!, my first bee sting, worms on asphalt on warm rainy days, Mr. C dressed up as a gorilla on Right to Read Week, playing chase with the boys and girls and having our classmate with Downs protect the girls, my mom’s eclectic and creative classroom and speech pathology “closet” office, arguing my right to be a member of the safety guard
