The House on Euclid
The house where I spent my early childhood was a good size: a few bedrooms, a roomy backyard and a basement filled with toys and space to play. A red brick colonial-style house with a standing lantern at the foot of our walkway, it was a charming home that sat close to the end of our “busy” street that I wasn’t allowed to cross by myself for as long as we lived there. As a kid, our home felt large and warm, and it housed so many first moments for all of us: my first steps, our first days at school, my brother’s first and only halfpipe in the backyard and more.
My siblings and I knew the neighbor kids well, and our community was fortified by small staple businesses like Gracie’s Water Ice in the summer, Villa Rosa for pizza down King’s Highway and Taylor Made Memories, a personalization store run by our honorary grandparents that lived next door. Our town, or borough as some would call it, was connected through seasonal events, neighborhood block parties and intimate game nights between the neighbors. My memories are built on a collection of these, and my senses are intimately intertwined with those memories. I can still feel the scratchy hay poking through my clothes on the hay rides in the fall. I remember my dad and brother teaching me how to make shadow puppets over the bridge. And every so often, a subtle yearning for Gracie’s will befall me and ultimately be left unsatisfied.
My memories of these days, though limited, are full and vibrant, and I often feel some melancholic longing to be back in that house, that town, with those people. My Haddonfield days gave me a sense of childhood that I could carve into stone and keep forever as this untouchable picture of youth and innocence. Those days were good, and the pieces of it that were hard are vague inclinations in a foggy field.
When I talk about Haddonfield with my parents, siblings and friends from back east, there is still a fondness for the town that we shared, but they paint a more well-rounded picture of it. There was loneliness and confusion for my siblings, uncertainty and sometimes strain that came with our community and there was immense grief in the years that followed our move for more than a few of our dear neighbors, grief that we just weren’t around for.
It’s been about 9 years since I’ve visited, and there is little else to say other than I miss it. It has changed, I could see that even then, and maybe it will one day be rewritten into something else in my memory. But I am grateful to have gentle recollections of peace to cling to when I feel fear or discontent creeping in, and it is comforting to know that the beginning of my childhood is written in absolute tenderness and joy. I could not ask for anything more, and I am lucky to have such light memories of my early years. I wonder what Haddonfield would have held for me should we have stayed. Would it remain a town that I loved so dearly, or would I find myself leaving voluntarily later on anyway?
Maybe one day I’ll end up back in that place, in that town, with new people to meet and my own block parties to throw. For now, I’ll just be looking back at old pictures, reminiscing about that house on Euclid ave. and hiding away pennies for my next trip back.
