summer break is over, for this blog

well my unintended vacation from this blog, is ofically over. i just wrote a memoir about living in new york, and i'm quite proud of it :) i hope you enjoy. lol sorry em, i didn't really put you in there. i couldn't fit everything i wanted, it's already waaay long. and there's so much i left out! well here goes, enjoy, and i hope you read all of it! also, this is the new and improved one, that i spent 4 hours rewriting
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An Adventure…
When I was a small girl, and my family went through a hard-hitting divorce, we didn’t know how we’d make it. My mom did interior design work with her sister for years, but never had schooling, and decided we should leave Salt Lake, for hectic New York City, with 6 kids, and a cat. We got a moving truck, piled in our furniture, leased out our big suburban house in Sandy and lifted off, ready for an adventure.


Launch, in 10, 9, 8….
We massed ourselves, including our cat, Shadow, into the Land Cruiser, with our duffel bags. I think if we put so much as one more finger in the car, it would explode in a mushroom cloud of clothes, car parts, and redheads. We drove three, 12-hour days to get there. As a five-year-old I was stunned by the world outside our valley. I had only ever gone to the California beach once or twice, but those memories blurred. This, my first time really outside of Utah, made the world seem like a different planet. I didn’t know how lush the world could look, compared to dry, shrubby, Utah. I propped my eyes open, and gawked at the foreign greenness.


The Firehouse…
Our first house in New York happened to be an old firehouse converted to a duplex. We arrived very late, and I only have glimpses of my first look at the firehouse; I remember seeing, over someone’s shoulder, a white house, turned dark blue in the night, as someone carried me inside, more than half asleep. We had a week before our furniture would appear, so we spent the first night with duffel bag pillows, and wood floor mattresses. The next morning, women from our new church somehow knew just what we needed; they brought us real mattresses, pillows, breakfast, and anything else we could think of. I can’t imagine lasting another night on the hard wood, even with my young body.


Culture Shock…
The people there were strikingly different than Utahans; fast paced, always with somewhere to go. I had to run to keep up with my mom, in the strong current of downtown New York’s bustling sidewalks. People spoke loudly, and paid no attention to what others thought. In the city, I saw sidewalk artists, musicians, and vendors, pedaling shiny trinkets, and yelling out to the world exactly why everyone needed to buy their particular merchandise. I saw People like I’d never seen before, with clothes and hairstyles new to me, especially at school. Everyone in my family was in school except my little sister Hannah, two years away from kindergarten. She went to a full time day care, which seemed a little sketchy in New York… but what else could we do? I attended day care with her, until I started kindergarten. One morning while my mom did Hannah’s hair for daycare, Hannah asked “Why can’t I have little pony tails all over my head, like Shaquille in my class?” The children in school spoke in different ways than I knew from home, but deep down, as kids, we related not through words, but simpler things. We all knew the same basic games, and got along just fine. My older siblings, like extra parents, were old enough to help watch us, make dinner, and tidy up the house (somewhat, being high-schoolers).


Keeping Busy…
We stayed in the firehouse for a year, before we found a new place in Scarsdale, just outside the city. But during a transition period that summer, we had to move out of the firehouse, and couldn’t move into our Scarsdale house, so we stayed in the Hampton Inn, which was the most exciting thing I could imagine doing at that time. Two months of swimming in a pool everyday, our beds made by someone else, and little strawberry candies left on the pillows, like a reward for messing up the beds. I became friends with all the staff, who gave Hannah and me, freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies in the evenings, warm and melty in our hands. But after a couple weeks, swimming in the pool didn’t seem so fun, and kids’ shows were a rarity on TV. Then my mom brought home a project we could all work on during the day to keep busy: a doll house kit. But not some plastic Barbie dream home. No, this was the real McCoy. Just like doll houses you see in museums, or books, where it’s all wood, every miniature piece perfectly carved and painted; even equipped for lighting. Yes, we built a mini mansion, complete with four floors, a deck, and an add-on bathroom and kitchen. The doll house really belonged to me and my little sister, but it kept my older brothers busy painting little wooden pieces, and carefully gluing them into place. We even got a miniature piano that would play Für Elise when wound. Hannah and I, so eager for it’s finish, couldn’t wait to start playing in it. Oddly, we refused to play with the actual human dolls, instead choosing to play with our animal figures, as people.


Pure Magic…
After the summer in the hotel, we moved to the verdant suburbs of Scarsdale. There I saw a display of the night that has stayed with and stands out to me, even after all these years: the sight of fireflies. On humid summer nights, they would come drifting out of nowhere, slowly blinking a yellow-green radiance in the twilight. Unlike any other bug I’d seen before; they did not flit and dart in startling patterns, crashing in to anyone or anything, but gently coasted through the air, a glowing mist. If you tried to catch one, it would speed up, just enough to evade your outstretched hand, but after a few tries, I nabbed one, and peeked at it through the hole I made with my thumb, in my small clenched fist.


On the Road Again…
Before I knew it, the time to drive back to Salt Lake City came, my mother’s two years of school completed. This time, we drove the moving truck back ourselves. I remember sitting with Hannah, making faces and elaborate hand signals to the other semi-truck drivers. We thought we had what qualified us as real truckers, and acted like it too. The men driving the semi-trucks smiled at us and honked their thunderous horns in return.


We Have Landed…
Being back in Utah was strange at first. We moved into our old house, with our old friends and neighbors right there to welcome us back. This made it seem like we hadn’t even left; I caught up with my friends in about 5 minutes, and started playing our same games, as if nothing had changed. My slight New York accent faded, and I started second grade. But New York has always stayed with me, even if I don’t show it. I can smell the subway’s distinct smell, picture the constellations on the ceiling of Grand Central, and see the boats on the Hudson River. I learned about another whole culture and I am determined to never let this part of my life slip away.