I grew up in a trailer park. There were two entrances to the park and one round oval of a road that went through it. Because each trailer space only had one narrow driveway at the back, most everyone had to park on the road in front of their trailer. So the oval was VERY narrow. It was difficult for two cars to pass each other going in the opposite direction.
I didn't know that we lived in the trailer park because we were poor. I didn't know that people looked down on me or considered me trash. I was never ashamed of where I lived. My friends who lived in regular homes never treated me any different but now that I look back I realize that their parents very obviously did.
Because we lived in a trailer park I was treated to neighbors from ALL walks of life. There was the old couple who lived in the REALLY NICE double wide right at the entrance. They had the nicest yard with actual TREES! My brother and I called them Grandpa and Grandma but in my mind they were the king and queen of the park. Their job was to watch over the children and make sure the parents did their job.
Then there was Mrs. Davidson. She lived in a dark corner lot. She was plump and dark haired and always laughing. Every once in awhile I would be invited into her home to take a piece of candy from the carnival glass candy dish on top of her console TV. Mrs. Davidson kept her blinds closed all the time so it was always dark. But she surrounded herself with fiber optic bric a brac. I don't even know if anyone will remember but an example would be two glass swans sitting on a mirror that represented a pond and out of the center of the pond would shoot a spray of small plastic fibers, like really long toothbrush bristles. They spilled over into the shape of a fountain and light would travel down the fibers and light up at the bottom. So the end of each fiber would have these little tiny balls of light at the end. Like fairy lights. If you touched them they would sway and bounce and the lights would dance. Then all around the fairy lights she would tuck little ceramic elves and flowers and boys and girls and the effect on my seven year old eyes was truly magical.
I would pretend her first name was Althea (at that age, I thought that a very magical name) and her job was to protect the fairies and elves of the kingdom (trailer park). I would imagine that she kept them safe in her darkened living room during the day and at night she would open all her windows and doors and all those dancing lights would zip away and sing and play until morning.
At the opposite entrance to the park was another old woman. I don't know if she was married. I never saw a man coming or going but I seem to have a hazy memory of someone telling me she cared for someone who lived there. This woman had bright red hair, long down her back with one white streak that trailed all the way down her right side. She kept it in a loose braid most of the time but sometimes she let it go. When it was like that she looked fierce and wild! I LOVED it that way. I thought she might be a witch! Good or bad I didn't know. You could tell that she was beautiful once but the thing that really fascinated me about her was her BLACK eyes. All black. Like they were one big pupil.
Whenever I got the rare treat of seeing her in her front yard I would stop my bike and almost WILL her to look at me. Sometimes she would acknowledge me but it was only with a wave of her hand, never a smile. She would turn those black eyes in my direction and I would be frozen in place by her stare. Chills would run up and down my spine and my tummy would get all tickly and then she would lift her hand in my direction and I would return her wave.
What I would have given to have a conversation with her! I just knew she had LIVED amazing adventures and knew all sorts of dark and wonderful secrets. But I never got the nerve. I still dream about her. I dream of knocking on her door and when it opens, she's standing there with her hair all wild and instead of a wave she beckons me to come inside. I still get a little thrill thinking about her thirty years later.
It's funny how I tended to gravitate toward the older people in the park as their were plenty of people the same age as my parents around raising kids, getting in fights, getting arrested. As you can imagine in a trailer park there was a lot of poverty, a lot of kids with dirty skinned knees, uncombed hair and runny noses. There was a lot of loud parties, a few police raids, though not as much as there probably are now. But none of that seemed to touch me. I wasn't AWARE that not everyone got to live in a park. It was the only life I knew and it didn't seem at all bizarre to me. It seems bizarre to me now.
Most of my childhood memories are contained in the space of that tiny little park. Racing around and around that oval at what I thought were breakneck speeds on my banana seat bike, running through our tiny sprinkler that you could place in the center of our yard and the spray would almost be able to cover the entire patch of grass without having to be moved. Setting up our sleeping bags and feeling very brave and grown up sleeping under the stars, not realizing that my parents weren't worried about us because we were surrounded on all sides by either chain link or trailer houses. Our own unique playpen.
I remember playing hide and seek with a group made up of all the kids in our park, every size, every shape, every age and we could use the ENTIRE park to hide in. We would run like wild Indians, whooping and hollering, cutting through people's yards, hiding in vegetable patches and not be expected home until it got too dark to see.
Every kid's swing set was open to every kid in the neighborhood. Every mother could be run to for band aids, wiping away of tears and a swat on the butt if it was required. It was a child's idea of heaven. A place where I knew I was safe, where I knew that every person knew my name. That if my mom was at work and something happened to me or my brother, there was always somewhere to go.
I look at my kids now and how we have raised them and it makes me a little bit sad. My kids don't hop on their bikes and ride to their friends house. Because of how the world has changed it is too dangerous to let them go anywhere alone. I always drive them where they need to go. Our little tomato slept in a tent in our backyard for the first time this summer. I would never have allowed it at our old house because our yard wasn't fully fenced. And I made her older sister sleep out there with LT and her cousins just in case.
When I think about it, we live in a quiet, sleepy little town full of good people but I think because of the media and the Internet we have become more AWARE of what is out there. The fears of the world have crept into our consciousness and made us hyper vigilant and over protective.
I wish things could be the way they were then. I hope that my children will be able to tell stories about magical fairy lights and wild women with dark eyes and dark secrets but I'm afraid that maybe a lot of the magic has been taken out of childhood.
Maybe part of my responsibility to my children is to teach them magic. To point out the shady part of the forest and ask them if they see the elves peeking out from under the ferns. To ask the horses over the fence how their day was, within earshot of my children, and then laugh heartily at whatever I pretend the horses answers to be. I will stop them from stepping on the box elder bugs because one of them could be the most beloved child of the fairy king. "If you spare his life today, maybe someday the king will return the favor when you need it most."
They will roll their eyes at me and think I've gone a bit daffy but every once in awhile I will be rewarded with a giggle and a smile. That's what magic is good for. That's what I need to impress upon my children instead of the creeping fear that I'm not watching them close enough. Our children are a reflection of ourselves. Do I want their perception of the world to be frightening and paranoid or do I want them to see beauty and magic?
So I am going home now to my children. The sun is starting to set. It's twilight. I think it might be the perfect time to leash the dogs and take the dirt road at the end of our street and just see where it might lead.
