At seven years old, my family lived in Elgin, a small suburb of Chicago, where the smell of lilacs engulfed the block. The way the wind warmed your arm hairs and allowed the back of your neck to prickle if you sat in the shade of a cherry tree for too long eminating from every crevice in the asphalt.
I remember my sister, trying to tag along with my friends and me, as we rode bikes around the block. Lauren still rode a tricycle at this time, a handed down Barbie bike-- four years old, thinking she'd keep up. The way the back wheels rocked back and forth as she rode, hitting the cement one at a time as she wobbled, peddled too fast for her legs, too slow for ours, lingered as me and my friends swung around the corner, out of her sight. She called out for me, I know. She started to cry, I know. She stopped, I know, feet firmly planted on the concrete, wiping tears from her cheeks.
I popped a wheelie, this time leaving my friends, pedaling faster than before-- half in fear of my mother, my father, half in fear of that unmarked van we were warned about just last week in school: some stranger danger shit.
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