I married Neil Goodman when I was three years old. He was four. We were inseparable and played together from the time we could walk. Throughout our toddler years, we became best friends. One day while we were playing, Neil turned to me and asked, “Bibby (he couldn’t say the letter “L”), would you marry me?” (more…)
The landscape of my childhood was filled with oaks and maples that swayed beside two-story, wood-sided homes with front stoops where parents sat smoking cigarettes on summer evenings while children chased fireflies.
Hillside was a town where neighbors spent time together, chatting while raking leaves and watching them burn in the fall, visiting over coffee and cigarettes on winter mornings, taking storm windows down and putting up screens in the spring, and talking on front stoops during sultry summer evenings when sitting inside became unbearable. Doors remained open, yards unfenced, and we each knew which door to enter when dropping by a neighbor’s house. (more…)