Sometimes places change, not necessarily due to the physical architecture, but more so due to the people who used to live there. I grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, a more surburban and ‘quiet’ area outside of busy Manhattan. And although everything in my neighborhood has stayed relatively stagnant, it feels so different to me now that the majority of my best friends (who I have made many memories with in this neighborhood) have left New York to go to different colleges around the country.
The top picture is a private community called the “The Gardens” that I always walked through with my friends after school. We used to admire the Victorian architecture of the houses and visit one particular house – infamously known as the ‘flower house’ because it was a house entirely covered up in multi-colored flowers owned by hoarders (we assumed). The bottom picture is the main street of Forest Hills, otherwise known as Austin Street or 71st Continential. Even looking that this picture brings back the nostalgia of getting lunch with my friends after school whether it was sushi, organic burgers, french pastries, brick oven pizza, or waiting for the Q23 bus that never comes on time, or going to midnight premires at the local movie theater.
Everyday when I commute from one end of Forest Hills to the other in order to get to the train in the morning, just doesn’t feel the same anymore. Forest Hills doesn’t feel as foreign to me as Brownsville felt to Kazin when he went back to visit, but it’s as if my sense of community and ‘togetherness’ with my own neighborhood has loosened because the people who were once there to make this place such a happy place for me aren’t apart of this neighborhood anymore. I know I still get to feel whole and intact with this area when my friends come home from Maine, Vermont, San Diego, and New Mexico but as of now, I’m still trying to get used to the emotional changes that are associated with Forest Hills.
C.S Lewis writes, “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different?”
