Wildflowers

My mom and I used to go for walks to the end of our block. Cool summer evenings were common in my childhood, and there was never a hesitation to take advantage of them. Our neighborhood included all of the mixings that cooked up the perfect quirky suburbia. We lived right in the middle of the block, so it was difficult for us to decide which way to go sometimes. If we went to the left, we would digress into the adjacent neighborhood. It would be dark before we realized we needed to turn around and go home, which would obliterate our opportunity to pick wildflowers at the opposite end of the road. If we went to the right, we would have too much time left after we finished collecting our bunches of Black-Eyed Susan, Queen Anne’s Lace, and Cornflowers. It was hardly a win-win situation, but the feeling of taking a fresh bundle home put the normal back into our lives.
The house we lived in really belonged to my aunt. She allowed us to rent the place at the discounted family rate of $250 per month. In the 1980s, I am not sure how much of a discount that entailed. The house was adorned with a double-wide driveway. One half was gravel, the other half was grass with a tire path carved into it. A rickety old Ford Fairmont was our primary mode of transportation, after our royal blue Chevrolet Chevette bit the dust.
The neighbors across the street gracefully decorated the front door with egg yolks and cracked shells. That was their retaliation against us for calling the police on them all of the time. They enjoyed deafening the neighbors with their head-thrashing music and throwing threats at my brother, sister and me while we played in the front yard. Fear consumed our lives. These maniacs were unpredictable. As the eggs turned into BBs and rocks, they could have very easily turned into bricks.
To their right lived a family from Alabama. They always sparked my fascination because of their devout southern accent. I lived a rather sheltered life, mostly due to protective parents and a Southern Baptist lifestyle. We always had sleepovers and spent Sunday afternoons together. Secretly, I was just there to hear them talk. Mom and I would occasionally share our mother-daughter walks with the Alabama mother and daughter. They would pick wildflowers with us.
Mr. Burke lived to the left of the delinquent house. He was a nice gentleman who always reminded me of “Mr. Belvedere.” His front yard was always freshly mowed and his landscaping was flawless. He had an enormous evergreen tree that guarded his home. It was perfect, too. Every year, he would have his driveway repaved. That is when he would park his car in one half of ours. We always felt good when he did that. It meant that we trusted each other.
I could not tell you the names of the neighbors to our right. Too many years have passed since I have spoken with them. I can tell you that their granddaughter was a noted troublemaker at my house. She always tried to persuade me, or one of my siblings, to repeat a naughty word or perform some naughty act, completely devoid of the watchful eye of my parents.
The family to our left remained introverted. They were well-acquainted with the hoodlum family across the street, but managed to look out for us anyway. We did not interact much with them, as they spent little time at home.
There was a haunted house on our street. Well, all of the neighborhood kids thought it was haunted. It was a tall house with gothic windows that cast a dark and dreary overglow. A long, thin driveway curled around to the back of the house, heavily framed by an avenue of evergreens that cast an unearthly shadow over the landscape. No one really knew the inhabitants of this fear factory. No one really knew if there were any inhabitants. I found out one Halloween when my mom coaxed me to the front door. With my brother and sister beside me, we knocked on the door. A long, deep, clunking echo rang loudly in our ears. We quickly found out that there was nothing to fear at all. As the door creaked open, a creepy old hand reached out to us. In that creepy old hand was a full-size candy bar. We were lucky to get even name brand candy from the rest of the neighborhood. From then on, I never feared the horror house. Their generosity at Halloween contradicted the negative image bestowed upon them.
Across the street from the horror house lived three other neighborhood kids in a row. One was a girl a couple of years older than me. She rarely wanted much to do with the likes of anyone younger than me, including my brother and sister. She was coming of age and ripening in her youth as she never failed to tell me stories of her newly found sexual interests. I was clearly not interested in manners such as those, but I had no choice but to listen if I wanted to be her friend. Deep inside, though, I envied her a little. I wanted to be older, more sophisticated. I wanted to be able to talk to boys and tell my friends about boys I had kissed. I believed the things she told me, giving in to my subconscious that she was just full of herself. I became completely gullible to any information she relayed to my small, naïve brain. She was the only person who was able to talk me into eating a leaf off of my maple tree. Nonetheless, it was a bittersweet goodbye when she left the neighborhood.
Not far from her house lived my brother’s bully-friend. He donned a flattop haircut with a long rattail hanging down his back. If there is any truth to the cliché, “Trouble” was really his middle name. He always caused trouble, started a fight, raised a ruckus, and then blamed someone else, namely my brother. He portrayed himself as a young “Rambo” figure, always flexing his biceps and wearing a headband across his forehead to catch his precious man-sweat. He kept the neighborhood rolling with his reputation, as there was never a kind word to come out of his mouth.
Keep on going and there is the neighborhood fat kid. He kept things interesting with us. He was never defensive about his weight; it never really came up. He was one of us, keeping up in the bike races and the kickball games. There was not a mean fat roll in his body, either. He would back one of us up in a heartbeat if it meant he could keep the peace within the neighborhood. Fighting was not his game, which balanced out the bully that always wanted to fight.
Coming back up the street, past our house at the end of our block, was a broad clearing of woods that met the road. At the edge of those woods would be groves of wildflowers, mixing an array of colors and scents that would send shivers down my spine as I sat to take it all in. The very sight made my eyes dance with joy and my heart flutter because there were no words to express the exhilaration I felt in my body. I could hardly contain myself as I reached and pulled, reached and pulled, the bunches of wildflowers in my hands. The perfect combination of Black-Eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s Lace and Cornflowers made life normal, and allowed me to forget the fears, frustrations, cheers, and crazy places that existed in our neighborhood. As the sun would cast its neon orange glow over our house, we would make our way home, fighting off envious swarms of bees and bugs who wanted one last swig of our sweet, nectar-rich wildflowers. We would immediately put them in a huge vase full of cool water and watch them light up the house with their rainbow of radiance.
And so, as life has passed, our beloved area of wildflowers is buried under a new subdivision of townhouses. The memories of summer walks, bully-friends and delinquent neighbors in our quirky suburbia have been lost in the woods.