Her Name Was Debbie
She was beautiful. And, my first love
When a memory is so haunting you have two choices: Continue to suppress it, or relive it to the fullest.
So when Libby Shively McAvoy of Dancing Elephants Press mentioned this prompt a few months ago, I immediately visualized that moment in my past of sheer love.
I was maybe ten.
We lived in a little suburban area of Newport News, VA. My elementary school was one block away, through our backyard and then the neighbor’s backyard. At the end of the block was the single-story brick elementary school, nestled in amongst the mid-century modern bungalows.
It was suburbia at its finest. Our house sat within a circle with nine other homes, the street was aptly called Hudson Circle. In true Southern fashion, this circle had a nice curbed lawn in the middle that the city maintained. Think of it as a grassy cul de sac.
It was a cul de sac where we would ride our bikes around it endlessly. We were safe, we knew our boundaries. We were smack dab in the middle of the American Dream in the sixties.
Small detached garages. Hardwood floors. Gas heaters sunk into the hardwood floors.
And a big old overhead street light smack dab in the middle of the neighborhood grass circle…
