I wish I could tell you exactly how many yards it was for me to get to Roxbury Park to give you the visual. A hop. Not even a skip and a jump. I walked two houses up, crossed Olympic and I was there.
That is where I spent my summers. Basically, doing absolutely nothing. Kind of like a Seinfeld episode. No sunblock. No checking in with my mother. I didn’t excel at anything in Roxbury Park. Not at caroms. Not the monkey bars. And certainly not the rings.
At the rings, I watched other kids adept at swinging quickly back and forth from one to the next. I stood high up one day, grabbed ahold and leapt off, but unable to catch the next ring, which seemed to move further and further away, I landed back where I started. I spent long days trying to push myself further until I did finally grab onto that second one, which was such a victory. Then I kept swinging back and forth, trying to gain the momentum I would need to get to the next, but failed and dropped to the ground. Again I tried, over and over, all summer until I was finally able to go back and forth, leaving the other kids waiting in line, drumming their fingers. And like a monkey, I would copy what the other ring junkies would do just before taking over the set for their performance. They would dig their hands into the sand and rub some of it between their palms for better friction. Or use chalk. It never seemed to work for me, but I did it to look cool, like them. Inevitably all us monkeys ended up with blisters.
In Margate, New Jersey, there is an ice cream shop that time forgot. It
is called Two Cents Plain and it has little white wire chairs with red
and white striped seats, red and white wallpaper festooned with
whimsical line drawings of flappers in long necklaces and gents in
boaters, and a jar on the counter where customers can deposit tip money
for the scoopers’ college funds. It looks just the same today as it did
in 1979, when I had my fifth birthday party there. 
My love affair with food began in the dim dark ages of the glorious 1990’s, when neon was king and it was cool to rock a mullet while listening to Marky Mark and his Funky Bunch. Born in San Diego and being brought up by a Hawaiian family from beautiful Kaneohe, greatly impacted my palate, and brought me to the culinary forefront well before my time.
There’s no question my husband loves his daughter, his dog and me – and no question, in that order – but he is not sentimental. He’s got his moments – as in, let’s dump my high school notes, let’s save his 80′s matchbooks – but on the whole, what Greg likes best is the ca-chunk of the recycling bin. Or better yet, the trash.
Some days are just harder than others.