So many childhood memories came flooding in. I remembered the hundreds of times I’d played hopscotch with Sarah, our colorful crayons marking out the play area. We passed the homes I knew so wel . Mrs. Kesler’s little yel ow house with the closed in porch. She’d often have hot fudge waiting for us when we got home from school. Mr. Thicket had the blue house on the corner. He’d open the front door and wave at us. His three little white poodles would always run out to greet us, yapping and yelping the entire time. I looked sadly at the house Miss Rochester had once occupied. A good friend of my mother’s, she was the one I went to whenever things went wrong and my mother wasn’t around. With no children of her own, she offered her home to us as the neighborhood safe house where kids could find refuge from the rain, the cold or simply if they’d gotten lost. “I can’t believe how much things have changed in so short of a time. How can it take so long to build such a beautiful city, such a perfect life only to have it shattered in a second?”
