A is for Address

My first home was in Amityville, NY, a small town on the south shore of Long Island. My parents, native Brooklyn-ites and newly married with a baby on the way, wanted a life in the suburbs, near the sea.

The front of the little house was spruce green. It had a tidy kitchen, dining room and living and two bedrooms upstairs. My dad converted the garage into a playroom, since my parents couldn’t stop the babies from coming. Within six years, my three sisters and I shared the attic bedroom, my brother had the tiny “baby room”, and the entire clan shared one small bathroom that barely held a tub and a pedestal sink (pink). 

I remember the backyard best, because it was where we kids ran through and around and played exhausting games. The backyard had a small garden and a patch of strawberries. Hedges marked the side boundaries. A little white picket fence bordered the canal. Dad always had a boat in the canal in the summer and on stilts in the side yard for the winter. It was a cozy cottage—my first home, filled to the rafters with happy memories.

My theme for the 2022 AtoZ Blog Challenge is titled Grand Prompts To Ask Your Grands. Each day in April I will present a conversation starter/journal prompt to ask your parents, grandparents, aunts, older neighbors, co-workers, yourself…you get the idea. The questions are meant to forge connections between and within generations and inspire storytelling and journaling. 

You can follow the the whole tribe of AtoZ bloggers on BlogLoving,  Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram .

#AtoZChallenge

Pray for peace. 

Take Your Seat at Stories Served Around the Table News to Nosh

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If you had purchased a paperback or ebook The Heart of Bakers and Artists, The Dreams of Singers and Sluggers and/or Becoming America’s Food Stories—Thank you!

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The Heart of Bakers and Artists

The Dreams of Singers and Sluggers

Becoming America’s Food Stories

Hope you are hungry. Becoming America’s Food Stories recalls the tales that have been told around my family’s dinner table. The histories explain the motivations over bowls of macaroni, antics play out while slurping soup, and laughter echoes throughout the dining room. Pull up a seat. There’s always room.
The Heart of Bakers and Artists is set in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, 1911. The story follows nine-year-old Lily, an American-born child of Sicilian immigrants, who wants to prove she is not a little kid. To be a big kid in the crowded tenement neighborhoods, she must tackle bigotry, bullies, disasters, dotty bakers, and learn to cross the street by herself
The Dreams of Singers and Sluggers picks up where The Heart of Bakers and Artists left off.Lily has big dreams to sing out with her powerful voice, but must do EVERYTHING, since Mama fell into a deep depression, the baby is sick, and the “Black Hand” terrorizes the neighborhood, threatening her chance to sing at the New York Highlanders Fourth of July baseball game.
Antoinette Truglio Martin is the author of Hug Everyone You Know: A Year of Community, Courage, and Cancer. The memoir is a wimpy patient’s journey through her first year of breast cancer treatment.

18 thoughts

  3. So cool to be reminded to ask Grands about things. Mine are gone, and I wish so many times that I had asked and written more things down to remember. First house was small, cement block home in Florida. I remember picking up seagrape leaves as big as paper plates every weekend all year round, but it was worth it to have the tree in that flat, closed in neighborhood. When I climbed to the top I could see a whole mile away! Enjoy A to Z!

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  7. My parents moved about 3 times to places around the Cleveland OH area in my first four years so I don’t remember much about the first two places other than from photos. The third place we lived until I was about 7 so I do remember that place a bit. A few years ago my wife and I drove through Cleveland and stopped at that house. After over sixty years the neighborhood and the little house still looked pretty nice.

    We moved several times with my parents throughout the years and in my adult years I’ve visited all of those past homes from Pittsburgh PA, San Diego CA, and Merrillville IN. Those were memory evoking visits.

    Arlee Bird
    Tossing It Out Battle of the Bands

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  8. Pingback: News to Nosh -a Writer’s Journey Newsletter – Stories Served Around The Table

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