If I could, I would return to the summers of my childhood. These were days of hope and imagination; they were days for changing pace. I would stay with my dad for the most part. He lived across the street from High Park, and my best friend lived next door. My neighbour Michelle and I had many adventures in our backyard where four garages stood facing each other. The sun warmed our concrete playground on good days, and the rain and small weed garden were perfect ingredients for mudballs on better days. We would ride our bikes in circles on the pavement and head off to the park in search of acorns and “boomerang” sticks at every opportunity, but our greatest adventures took place in grungy alleyways and narrow, hidden jungles. On one side of my house was the Popsicle Hideout. It was a dark, dingy alley with garbage lining the indented right-hand side. We often came here to visit our friends the potato bugs, and we would savour the sweet flavours of cherry, raspberry, and “white” popsicles on our tongues while hanging like monkeys on the chipping, green railing. Right across from the Popsicle Hideout was our Landlady’s mysteriously overgrown garden. Mrs. Carris’s Garden was blocked off by a rusted gate; this, of course, did not stop us. With an intense rush of excitement, we would become cat-like spies and creep stealthily through the small space between the gate and the wall. Equipped with our Ghostbusters water bottles from McDonald’s, we would spend hours winding through dense bushes, escaping the peeping eyes of our world for a land of scrapes and itchy leaves. The piercing smell of cedar invading our nostrils we would come to the end of the garden where one of our greatest treasures was hiding: brilliant breathing rubies. We would gather the smooth, round berries for our potions and sneak away unseen; Mrs. Carris never knew. But, the most important hideout was The Secret Hideout. It was narrow and filled with curtains of leaves, and our greatest mission was preserving this thick mass of green. We would set up booby traps in futile attempts to keep Marcel and his deadly pruning shears away. How could he get rid of that magical place?! The Secret Hideout was our own private world, it was our mudball factory, it was our home. When it rained, the canopy protected us; when we were scared, the branches hugged us; when we were happy, the leaves shared in our laughter. It was in this simple concrete yard possibility grew in the cracks of the pavement. It was in this simple concrete yard I found my childhood summers.
