home

i've had a lot of homes in my life. but when i say "my hometown," this will always be peoria. grandmothers live there and groups of cousins, the screen porch and grandma o's china collection, cabinets full of antique mementos of a life and past worth displaying. i think of the woodpecker—both with dad as a seven year old, awed at the daring height, and again as a married woman in her 30's, showing off the view to her new husband. i think of christmas eve's and church on sunday, riding bikes criss-cross around the familiar neighborhoods. i remember climbing the treacherous staircase to the top of pat's warehouse downtown, the best view for the fireworks over the river on the fourth of july. there are riverboats and steamboat days and the gus macker basketball tournament: filling the streets downtown with boys in long shorts and matching jersey tanks.

peoria is my grandma's stuffing on thanksgiving, her china dish on the oversized hutch and sneaking sugar cubes. a dozen of tins of christmas cookies and her famous egg salad on doll-sized pepperidge farm bread. peoria is sneaking out with my girlfriends to TP the neighbors house, flying millard's plane, and mowing the lawn on that horrible riding lawn mower on sheridan road. i remember learning to drive in the richwoods highschool parking lot; josh teaching me to drive stick shift in that old rabbit convertible. the easter egg, parties in the basement, beer cans hiding amongst the shelves of cabbage patch dolls. i remember toys-r-us when my name came up on the waiting list the day the doll arrived. my teal-painted furniture—refreshed from the antique streaked blue of my mother's youth. the bubblegum carpet in my bedroom, the aquarium, and the hermit crab in the glass bowl on top of my dresser. peoria will always be swimming: willow knolls, the YMCA, lifeguarding at the park district. standing outside the fire on the way to lakeview with jamie.