POSTCARD FROM THE SLOPE_BROOKLYN SUMMER

by Susan Dorrington
OTBKB Guest Writer

Our fourth summer in Brooklyn is drawing to a close.

We moved here from Enfield in north London in July 2001. Enfield sits in that indefinable outer rim of a sprawling metropolis – not quite gritty inner-city, not quite leafy suburbia. It aspires to both, but feels like neither.

In comparison, we feel like true city dwellers here in Park Slope, with its bustling avenues and Manhattan just a hop, skip and jump away. We felt at home here as soon as we clambered out of the yellow cab from the airport onto Third Street. I remember standing in our backyard on those first few evenings, giddy with excitement at the prospect of our new beginning, watching fireflies with child-like awe and inhaling the aroma of a Brooklyn night – a curious mix of laundry from the basements and garlic from the restaurants hanging in the steamy air.

The sounds of Park Slope filled our ears like a movie soundtrack –
children on the sidewalks, neighbors on their stoops, sirens on Seventh and bursts of jazz escaping from open windows, a trumpet here, a saxophone there rising above the endless thrum of air conditioners. If Enfield had a soundtrack, we didn’t hear it, cooped up in our homes, windows shut against cool, gray skies.

In England, children have a six week ‘summer holiday’ from school. In my childhood those six weeks seemed endless. So, at first, we were vaguely alarmed to discover our children would have a ten week summer vacation in Brooklyn. But we have slipped effortlessly into the ways of a Brooklyn summer – sports camps, drama camps, picnics in the park, long lazy days at the beach and filling the time at home. September rolls around quickly enough. Meanwhile, in the UK, academic bureaucrats are trying to reduce the six week summer holiday to as little as three, fearful that the UK’s children will forget how to form a paragraph, do long division or spell bureaucracy if left to have fun for too long. I hope, for the sake of the young friends we left behind, they don’t
succeed.

There’s just a week or so left now before school begins. Nearly
everyone is back from their travels. The boys flit from playdate to
playdate with the ease of bees from flower to flower. Our friends are mostly just a few blocks stroll away; in Enfield, getting to friends’ houses or even the store to pick up milk meant a trip in the car.

We need to get down to Staples, pick up some composition notebooks and pencils; we need to rummage through the boys’ clothes, check they have at least one t-shirt each without pizza stains and holes; we need to adjust our routines so those early starts are not such a shock, get our brains geared up for the rigors of fourth grade and seventh grade ...

... but most of all we just want to enjoy the last few precious days of our Brooklyn summer, making the most of our adopted city which still feels like home.