A love letter to my hometown

Dear Brookline, Massachusetts,

There is so much about you that I treasure, yet I couldn’t wait to leave. I reveled in your history and architecture, your proximity to Boston and even Fenway Park, your neighborhoods filled with two-family homes and three-unit brick apartment buildings built early in the 20th century, the mix of professors and small store merchants, professionals and fourth generation liquor store owners, Jewish delis and bookstores, the distinct seasons that both delight and oppress. I loved that the streets in Coolidge Corner were empty on the high holidays, yet hated that everyone in my class was Jewish, except for the one or two Catholic kids. My dad knew all of the cops and gave them bottles of booze for Christmas so our car, with the license plate 39187, never got a parking ticket. My mother wouldn’t shop at Pick a Chick, where rotisserie chickens twirled in the window, because she could cook her own chickens. We brought in Chinese food, once a week, and ordered enough for a second meal that included spare ribs and shrimp with lobster sauce, even though eating ham or pork chops was completely out of the question. Jack and Marion’s, the big deli next to Brigham’s ice cream (where we always ordered Jimmies on our cones) had oversized menus and the best free pickles. 

Our schools were tops, or so they told us ad nauseum. We had hip teachers, from Harvard, who taught us about Jazz and women’s liberation, Neitsche and Ibsen. Brookline Village, filled with gentiles, was worlds away – about a mile – and South Brookline was where the neuvo-riche lived in ranch style homes. Fisher Hill featured mansions where the Goldbergs, who owned Stop and Shop, lived. A maid cleaned Debby’s room every day.

I could walk to the homes of Aunty Rosie and Aunty Selma, to and from school and Hebrew School, and to my Bluebird and, later, Campfire Girl meetings at Evie’s house. We learned to drive and also to go “parking” with our boyfriends in the lots at Boston College. Going to see the view up on Cory Hill was code for making out in the front seat or maybe even the backseat.

Brookline, you offered snow, sleet and sludge in the winter, blindingly beautiful colors of fall leaves, bursting blossoms in springtime and steaming sidewalks in summer. The biting cold and stifling humidity made us tougher but, alas, I was blessed with a sense of adventure that sent me first to Chicago and then to San Francisco, in search of something else. I’m happy here but man could I use a big plate of fried clams with tartar sauce right about now.