Flickr: abchick

Recently, I had a chance to spend some time in the place where I grew up, Oak Park, Michigan. I was visiting my mom with my wife and sons and we swung by a park that I used to love as a boy. It’s called Shepherd Park, behind the rec center and the baseball diamond, but growing up we always called it “Oak Park Park.”

I get excited and happy whenever I go back to Oak Park. I actually grew up also in Royal Oak, where my dad lived, but spent most of my Mondays through Fridays in Oak Park. Over the years I have come to believe that most people are terribly attached to where they’re from. To you, it may seem like a mess, someplace you could never get comfortable, but to them it’s a special space where they can breathe and stroll easier, where the streets are known even if the storefronts have changed. I think places are precious to us not so much because of what they are or where they are – although there is that, too – but because of what was going on inside you when you were there and how you fit into it. A place is more than the avenues and the trees, it’s actually inside you.

Certainly, this is how I feel about Oak Park, and I don’t think I could ever adequately explain why I love it. If you went there with me, you’d probably be entertained by my enthusiasm but puzzled by this somewhat dingy, boring suburb. I’d try to explain – I’d start by describing Detroit, which is like a shoebox, with 8 Mile Road the lid of the box. Various suburbs cling to the box, and Oak Park is one of these, on the north side. The closer the suburb to the shoebox, the more urban it is, so Oak Park has that feel to it. At one time it was one of the most diverse cities in the country – I haven’t seen stats on this for a long time but Oak Park used to have the greatest mix of blacks, Jews, Asians, whites, Middle Eastern people and others – and this is something I’ve always loved about it. Pulling off 696 and driving up Coolidge I see signs in Arabic and black families going about their business and Haasidic Jews in their black suits and hats walking somewhere and Virgin Mary statues on lawns. This fills my heart up with quiet joy. I also see restaurants and stores that are still standing from when I was a kid and my memory is populated with scenes from fertile times. I can taste the excitement of when I was a kid on a summer night, and me and my brother had money saved up for new G.I. Joe figures, and we were gonna get Primo’s pizza and some Faygo from Fred’s Party Store and watch Enter the Ninja on Cinemax. “Look, kids!” I cry. “This is where daddy grew up.” They’ve heard this. Repeatedly.

Oak Park Park that day was in grand form, leafy and autumnal. The play area is kind of tucked away amid the houses, those solid 1960s style houses, certainly not the first thing you see from the street, and we arrived to play as the day was slipping into dusk. My kids know this park from occasional visits and were straining at their seatbelts to get out of the minivan and romp. It has a playscape that wasn’t there when I was a boy but it also has a big wooden truck you can climb on and a big wooden train. I wonder if they even make kids’ climbing things out of wood anymore – Jaycee Park in Royal Oak had an awesome “old west” town made out of wood and iron that is long gone. We used to re-enact that truck scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark and play James Bond Battles SPECTRE on the train. I pulled the kids out of the minivan and breathed it all in.

I played with them. I always play with my kids at the park but there was something different this time, an unusual degree of enthusiasm, even for me, that carried me away. “Come on, kids!” I shouted. I was running now – running! I was up on the half-buried tractor wheels and climbing the train. My kids were right behind me, and other kids, seeing an adult in the mix, gravitated to us (ever notice that?). We played hard – “I bet you can’t get up there! All right, let’s pretend there are ninjas attacking the train and we have to fight them all off…” and when the all too insistent dark descended through the canopy of pines and it was time to go it was with great reluctance.

I have never been a tearful man but I have also never been afraid to cry. Since becoming a father I have become more sentimental about all things and it’s quite easy to get me choked up – even a 30 second TV commercial can do it. As I put my oldest into his car seat he said, “Dad, I want to stay at Oak Park Park. I never want to leave.” “Son,” I replied, with a touch of comedy meant to entertain (and annoy) my wife, “that’s the thing about Oak Park Park. You may have to leave it but it never leaves you. It’s always in your heart.”

I was joking, but even so I managed to push a sob into my throat and a couple of tears into the corners of my eyes. As I said, it’s easy to do – watch what happens to me when Jean Valjean sings “Bring Him Home.” I had meant the remark facetiously, but it was true. Where you’re from is inside you, always, and you can only share it a little.

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