Growing up Sunset

                         Who I Am

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         I am a tall kid, a bit short with blond hair that is curly red.  My dad came here while we remained in Norway and we followed later.  My family is Italian and I came here only speaking Chinese.  As a young Puerto Rican I had many friends that I played with everyday until the sun went down.  My father, like many other men from Poland found work in Greenwood Cemetery.  I didn't realize how difficult times were for my mom, raising us kids on her own.  My family devoutly followed our Muslim faith and as an Irish kid I saw the neighborhood changing as bars and pizzerias gave way to bodegas, 99 cent stores and taco trucks along 5th Avenue.  

 

      As a strict Catholic  I went to confession every week so that I could make communion on Sunday.  We owned a two family home that folks called a mother and daugher home and the best part of the day was spent on our small stoop with only six steps.  Sometimes we would sit on the top step of our brownstone stoop and from the 11th step looked up and down the street as we played cards.  My mom cooked native Greek dishes but to me I thought everyone ate the same food as we did.  

 

       My father, like most Dominican fathers was very strict.  I remember as a little girl my mother telling me that one day we would travel from Puebla to the United States where our father was preparing a new home for us. I knew I felt different about the opposite sex, but I was worried about what my friends would think if I told them.  In South America the way of life was so different from the U.S. but to me life was an adventure.  I remember my mom crying one day, she was worried that the check hadn't come and the landlord would be upset.  

 

       Us boys sometimes got into trouble but nothing was more serious than our stickball games with other blocks.  Everyone in our co-op was from Finland but only the older people spoke Finnish, I loved living so close to the big pool in the park.  I remember when my father sat me down and told me about drugs and what they were doing to my uncle and how I should never take drugs.  

 

      On a  cold day in December, after we had only been in the United States for a week, my mother and father took me to sit on the lap of a man wearing a red suit and big white beard and they took my picture and the man gave me a bag with gifts in it.  I thought to myself - what a wonderful country this is, I am so proud to live in the United States of Sunset Park.