The title is literally accurate, but not in the sense that I was attending school. Nobody in my family attended any type of school or program before kindergarten, which I think was normal in those days?
We lived in a townhouse in Burke built in 1972, which we moved into in May of that year when I was three months old (and where my parents still live). My world existed in that house, on the sidewalks that formed a C in front of three rows of houses, and in the small patches of woods tucked into the corners and running behind the rows of houses.
One of my earliest memories was of a tree in one of those patches of woods between our row and the row caddycorner, thankfully spared when they built the neighborhood. A miraculous tree had grown here: the lower part of it ran parallel to the ground and then stretched straight up to the sky. I knew what it was the second I laid eyes on it: a pony, just my size. Actually, I had to be lifted onto it for a few years, and then as I grew, I was able to swing my leg up and over and get on by myself. Over the years, I visited it less frequently, and I was completely flabbergasted by how small it was when I went to check on it in high school. At some point, it must have died; when I visited it as an adult, it was gone.
Another memory from around this time also involves a tree. A bigger stretch of woods ran behind the row of houses directly across from us. One day we decided to play house in these woods, and I found the perfect place to make dinner. The base of a tree had a big hole in it, so I decided to make soup for the family. It’s a simple recipe: two heaping pails of mud, a generous handful of leaves, and a small bucket of water. Stir with a stick, and voila!
My Corner of the Village 