Who I am

As we drive down Reading's streets, I feel as if I am in a movie that mixes time periods.

The houses where Elaine, Jeff, Janet and others lived decades ago are occupied by different families, probably several families since I visited in their living rooms, made chocolate chip cookies as part of being a Brownie, dropped them off after some event, etc.

Vacant lots and farms have become housing developments.

The Lowell Street and Prospect Street Schools are now homes. Highland Street School is the town library. The High School has a new building on the old site. Only the Parker Junior High still functions, but Mr. Butcher, Mr. Ganley, Mr Spencer, Mr. Copithorne teachers I loved, are no longer with us, I am sure. They were old when I was young. They taught me well and gave me a love learning for most subjects and a tolerance for the rest--except math. I didn't care how beautiful Mr. Ganley's eyes were, I still didn't like or do well in math.

Having tea at Christopher's, the old Pewter Pot with a high school friend was followed by a tour of Haven Street. The third and fifth Friday nights where I attended Rainbow is under transformation, and my friend said Rainbow doesn't exist.

The post office front is still there, but is dwarfed by a huge condo project. Nothing is quite the same. Nothing is totally different.

I was much loved as a child. Despite my parents being divorced, my mother and grandmother reinforced my intelligence and gave me confidence in my appearance. Although I suspected they were prejudice, I had enough confidence based on the fact that my image never cracked a mirror.

From the time I was at Mrs. Jones' kindergarten, I felt I didn't belong. It was more a niggle than a shrink-necessity illness. I would look at maps and try an figure out where I belonged and where I should go. We seldom left town.

My mother felt the golf club with its pool and tennis courts provided the social life and vacation destination we needed. The town center provided all the shops needed, although we might drive down the road to the Northshore Shopping Center in Peabody once or twice a year.

I always felt that I should join the world outside even to Boston 12 miles away.

As a new bride my ex was assigned to Stuttgart, Germany, and I felt freed. I was in the world. However, we came back to Reading and the gate closed.

We drove by the house my ex and I bought. Even that had changed. It had grown a second story.

It was from there, I escaped to Waltham, then Boston and finally France an Switzerland where I live happily today.

Riding those streets, I saw a very pretty, typical middle to upper-middle class community. There are still lots of Cape Cod houses, split levels and ranches. Not so many McMansions. The homes are well taken care of as they were when I was growing up.

Under it all was a past. I don't regret it...it gave me my education, my ethics, my sense of the importance of people and how to treat them well. The lessons of my childhood have formed the base for who I am today. I was able to keep the feeling of being smothered by a society where I never felt I belonged at bay.