New York Part 1

Eventually, the tall, gray skyscrapers and colored flurries of cars became gently waving wheat stalks and freely grazing cows. The Sun shied away, and a sorrowful hood of clouds floated in. Rain danced down from the heavens and walked down my side window. The rhythmic tapping of rain coaxed me into sleep.

When I awoke, the rain had subsided, but the Sun was still hidden away. I glanced out. Uniform buildings the color of wet sand, topped with charcoal roofs. Winding paths of weathered sidewalks. A sign carved out of gnarled oak caught my eye:

Meadowbrook Apartments

The car eased between two fading white lines before a building we would eventually call the Clubhouse. I helped unload. The red rolling suitcase that held my parents’ clothes and bathroom items. The purple one that held me and my brother’s clothes and toys. The slender black bag that held my dad’s laptop. The rest—endless towers of boxes we’d packed before—were on their way in a PODS truck. We hauled our luggage into the Clubhouse. The Clubhouse floor resembled a large table of coins; each step rang with a metallic echo. The old lights shone with a cozy glow, glazing the floor with the color of old documents. My eyes rocked over the coins; they winked at me. I sat patiently on a worn cushioned chair, rocking my eyes, noting which coins winked. Some shone proudly polished and others stood dull. I warded off boredom in this way until my parents emerged from the adjacent door, fitted with brass keys. We loaded our aqua green camry once again and drove up to a nearby complex. Once again we hauled our luggage: up a sidewalk decorated with multiple shrubs, entering an old, heavy, white door that was chipping at its edges. A couple steps forward and my dad pulled out his keys. An unassuming wooden door with a brass plate that read:

129

The brown, recently vacuumed carpet floor lay below me. Off to the side a narrow kitchen. Up ahead the area opened to a wide living room before funneling into a narrow hall, which hid doors into two rooms and a bathroom. I lay on the carpet living room with my brother while my parents sorted through the luggage. The carpet was no different from the one I lay upon in Washington.

One of the first items to reveal itself was my collection of LEGOs. Cartons of loose bricks waited for me, but my past creations stood firm as well. Without a phone, and with the TV yet to be unpacked, I found much entertainment in my LEGOs that summer and refused to think about much else. Leading up to the first day of school, the living room became lively, the kitchen became crowded with pots and pans, the bathroom was often steamy, and lines of sheets and beds found themselves compact in a room. But my LEGOs stayed where I found them, amidst the living room, and my past creations I had devised in Washington stood unchanged; therefore, I found it suitable to stay there, unbothered by the changes.