A sadness for home that never ends. Is it true you can never go home again?? Coming back to New York brings up my childhood. The times I jumped over cracks in the pavement, singing, “jump over the crack so I won’t break my mother’s back.” Nonsensical rhymes that seem to warm my heart. The attached brick buildings, ornate in the decor, carved by our European ancestors who came to America to find the golden life. The smells of garlic, frankfurters on a grill, roasted coffee and aromas from every ethnic food stray along the winds of New York. Busy streets, busy people, Bloomingdales, Cartier, Lower East Side bargains, 5th Avenue and the astute doormen. Over the bridge Brooklyn where I was born. My father’s deli, my mother’s beauty parlor and mah jong games, my grandmother’s potato blintzes and chicken fricassee. This was home to my childhood. Italian, Irish, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Polish, Russian Jews, all the immigrants that came through Ellis island, millions of homeless souls, with only their hearts, souls and memories of the old country where most lost their families and friends.
Can you ever go home again? You can never leave it. It is always in your blood, in your DNA, in your cells. I can feel the smell of summer in Brooklyn, the sweetness of salt from the ocean, the shouts of tag football, the skip ropes, bike wheels scooting down the streets. Everything was alive and life was endless.
What happens when you can never go home again? Ghosts of the past follow you…haunt you with shifting memories, sensations of what felt like home. Where is home?
My childhood home in Brooklyn, NY
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