Special Places in my Childhood

According to Nabhan and Trimble in the Geography of Childhood,special places for children are those specific places or spots, not the grand landscape that I, as an adult, love to take pictures of. I try to think back of my childhood, and Nabhan and Trimble are true! -because my "special" places were:


- The hill near my house where my friends and I use to run every afternoon to get "kresen" fruit. What is that fruit in English, anyone knows?

- My parents' back yard. There were rocks (used for construction), but my sister and I liked to pretend that the rock was near the beach(or sometimes, near the mountains). We liked to take our pillows and mat out, then just lay down, pretending we were sun bathing (well, we were sun bathing, of course!). Then our skin got really dark from the afternoon sun and our mother was mad at us... ha!

- The side yard where all the trees where. I used to make children game center in my backyard: golf, bowling, "engklek," etc. and when my friends in the neighborhood came to play, I charged them 5 rupiahs. Talk about a serious business here :)

- Of course, that one mango tree. It was my second home. If my parents could not find me, they knew exactly where to look for.

- My parents' l'il car. It was because when they took me to my grand parents house, I sat at the back, playing with my imaginary character: Anastasia Emanuelle Tati. Yes, I still remembered her name! She was a model for the GADIS or MODE magazine.
Anastasia had a twin brother, but I forgot his name. They always played together.

- The garage. My front neighbor's hen liked to lay her eggs in my garage! Oh my! My neighbor was really kind and the family did not want to have more chickens, so they always said, take the eggs to eat! And so we did, and for quite some time, we always had fresh eggs :)

- The front yard. It was not special for its beauty, though, but because I had my first traumatic experience. I grew up having a dog. I loved dogs, and other animals. As you probably know, in my home town, there were cats walking around the neighborhood and they did not have owners -or they did and maybe they just loved wandering around. So that day, I was sitting on the front porch and I saw this one cat, its (yes, its) body full of blood; I though it just had a fight or something. From that day on, I dislike cats.

Well, anyway, I think I'm going to really like this book...