By Amy Keyes 
Last summer, we hit the jackpot with two new sets of amazing neighbors. Young families with the cutest kids, breathing the sound of the youngest years of childhood back into our street.
Our boys are in the final years of teenhood, and it seems like just yesterday they were the new kids on the block. Squealing with laughter as they dove headfirst into piles of leaves being raked on our front lawn. Gasping for air between their tears when they fell off their bikes, or arguing with their buddies during a heated front lawn football game. Begging for Friday night family games of basketball or horse that ended with ice cream and movies snuggled up on the couch.
Things sound so different these days. Those piles of leaves blown and bagged without any crunch of running joy. Those front-yard football games with friends have been replaced by hours at the high school practicing with their teams. Their bikes sit in the corner of the garage, collecting dust while I listen anxiously for the sound of the car pulling in the driveway after a night out. Those family games of basketball have given way to hours of dribbling on the driveway alone listening to music, followed by video games or closed doors on the phone with friends. And a lot of silence.
Sometimes I wake up early to the sound of the trampoline across the street creaking with the weight of the little ones on the block trying out the new tricks of childhood. The sound of the swing set next door waving in the wind as they reach for the sky with all the innocence and joy that young childhood brings. And I miss those days so much. The days when our kids were so young and carefree. When they were the ones who breathed that newness of childhood onto our street.
The other night, we had a block party. It was a wonderful collection of warmth, capturing the spectrum of life—a street full of generations that span almost a century. A tapestry of ages that found themselves looking forward or looking back at this life we all live, wondering where the time went, and where it is going.
My oldest son arrived home from cross-country practice, and as I watched him pull his car up and join the festivities, it occurred to me that we now have the old kids on the block. The drivers. The “where do you think you want to go to college?” answerers. The “my, how you’ve grown, when did you get so tall?” young men who are not the same kids they were when we moved here just seven years ago. The boys that so quickly turned to young men, and in that process, have made me so much more aware that we are no longer the spring chickens we once were.
I watched our sweet little neighbors, sitting on their dad’s lap, inviting him to look up at the stars with them. Wiping away the tiredness as they stayed up past their bedtimes enjoying these magical moments. And I couldn’t help but wipe a tear from my eye, trying to recall the last time my children snuggled in next to me. Trying to remember the last time they even fit on my lap, before they towered over me by close to a foot.
I glanced over at our older neighbors, who at one point in their time here, had the new kids on the block. Now proud grandparents and great-grandparents to be. And I couldn’t help but wonder if they were gathering up their own memories the same way I was. Those moments that now feel so scattered in the wind, like the wisps of the wish makers my kids used to love to close their eyes and dream on.
It’s a weird feeling being at this juncture in life. Middle-aged. Older kids. Wondering where it all went and how it went so fast. Time slipping through my fingers like tiny grains of sand.
And while I miss those days past, there is so much beauty in having the older kids on the block. Watching them be role models to our youth and also reminders of childhood still to our elders. Helping me live in the present, knowing that someday, our kids won’t be the older kids on the block either because they will be out in the world on their own blocks.
So I’ll continue to gather it all up and take it all in. The gales of childhood I catch in the wind from across the street, balanced by the lone silhouette of my own teenager bouncing the basketball late into the night. And I know in all the years to come, my heart will echo with the magic of the memories.
by Jenny Albers 
