When I was little, I used to stand right there, by the northwest corner of East Ward Elementary School.  I stood there to wait for my friend Stacie to catch up with me after school so we could walk home together.  I stood there to see Kim fight with Billy before declaring him to be her boyfriend.  I stood there watching the big kids across the street pour out of the back of the Middle School.

If there were no other people around, sometimes I daydreamed.  I used to lean all the way over and hang my head down until I was looking at the cornerstone upside down, where even from that angle, it still read “1961.”  My first palindrome, my favorite feature of the sprawling, one-story building with the sunny classrooms, polished gym floor, and the library where Mrs. Daschiel (oh, Mrs. Daschiel–someone needs to tell you to wax your mustache!) had hung on the wall a poster of two shaggy haired children kissing on a park bench, with the 1970′s font inscribing the corner simply “LOVE.” 

This tidy building was the site of many happy days, even though my first day there in August of 1973 was traumatic.  My mother walked me to the first day of kindergarten, three and a half blocks from home, past the 1961 sign and to the end of the building, turning the corner and walking with me all the way to the opposite, southeast corner where the box elder bugs flew around the metal door to Mrs. Gable’s kindergarten classroom.  Children were there crying, and I didn’t want my mom to leave:  not necessarily because I was afraid to go to kindergarten, but because this was the first time in my life when I had had her to myself for more than a minute, and she’d held my hand the entire way to school, which was completely alien to me and I felt shyly close to her in a way that was rare for the eleventh of twelve children in a bustling household.

But she left me there after an admonition to be good and a quick squeeze of my hand.  And Mrs. Gable made us all come inside and sit in chairs at round tables, and read the roll call.  She came to the long, distinctive German last name of our family, and looked up.  Her eyes fell on me and I raised my hand.  I heard her mutter to herself, “Oh God.  Another one.”

But mostly, it was a wonderful place, especially the hours at recess, where all of us little girls would gather up new locust tree seed pods in the spring when they were still velvety and green, and peel them open to reveal the beans. We split the beans down the side and peeled off the green outer skin to reveal an opaque white membrane inside the exact shape and size of a whole human fingernail. We’d carefully ease them off the beans and place them over our fingernails, enjoying the visual effect of gorgeous fake nails, years before press-on nails were common.  Fancy stuff. 

Tetherball, swings, hopscotch, four-square.  The pebbled concrete occasionally carried loose gravel that skidded us thrillingly and sickeningly for several feet before we either recovered or wiped out.  In winter, we huddled in a corner by the side of the building where the vestibule jutted out, playing hand-slap rhyming games, rock/paper/scissors, or whispering secrets to each other.

And it was on this corner, right by the 1961 sign, that I stood in shock and dismay as my friend Stacie broke the news to me that Santa Claus was not…well, that he wasn’t. 

Mostly, I think of this very spot as an anchor.  It’s a place that seems to me unchanged, in the place where I grew up, where even my parents’ home is dramatically different than when I was little.  It’s disheartening to return to a place you picture in your mind and find it different. This one little corner of the world reminds me that it is still somewhat possible, in the middle of the chaos of life, to find a fixed point that you can rely on.  Sometimes it’s nice to know there’s something out there that you can recognize, even if the rest of the world appears to have been turned upside down.