“And over there is the synagogue where I went to pre-school,” Jules says, pointing at a magnificent brownstone. Our walk along Union Street in Park Slope is approaching its end as we near Prospect Park. For him, the journey has been filled with nostalgia. “I had a group of three friends while at pre-school, and for my fifth birthday, I invited them all over to my house,” he reminisces. Jules continues to ramble about his batman birthday cake, the games they played, and gifts that disappeared into the folds of time long ago, but I stop listening. I remember all of my own early birthday celebrations where it was just me, my mother, my sister, and maybe a couple of cousins. Inviting school friends over to our house was strictly forbidden, even though many of them lived in our building. My mother’s insistence on insularity in our household stemmed from her fear of the unknown. Unlike many of the larger minority groups in New York, Turkish immigrants were too few and too scattered in the early 2000s to form an enclave of their own, giving them no choice but to settle among other groups. Our building, located at the crossroads of Borough Park and Sunset Park, offered an eclectic mix of Bengali, Puerto Rican, and Chinese families. To my mother, however, they were all part of the other, and therefore, they were unwelcome in our apartment.
We slow down as we approach the opening to Prospect Park. Our walk began on Union Street and 5th Avenue and would continue into the depths of the park. Although Jules and I had both attended middle school in Park Slope, he had been a lifelong denizen while I rarely ventured beyond 5th Avenue. Along our trip, I absorbed the novel sights in solitude while he barely noticed the opulence surrounding us. I took in the century-old townhouses, worth millions more than when they were originally built, and the high-end shops that my mother wouldn’t dare set foot in. To Jules, however, the gourmet ice cream shop signaled nothing more than the simplicity of fond childhood memories.
As we walked past the Park Slope Food Coop between 6th and 7th Avenue, Jules explained to me the social and business models behind the establishment. I marveled out how disparate families could unite to contribute their share of labor every week in order to provide more affordable organic groceries to all members. Such practices would not flourish in Sunset Park, a neighborhood which lacked a sense of community and where every family kept mostly to itself. Watching the employees leave the Coop, wearing their work uniforms and carrying bags of groceries, I recalled my mother shopping at the C-Town on 8th Avenue in Sunset Park. She would carefully watch as the price of each scanned item appeared on the computer screen, convinced that the cashiers were trying to cheat her. Upon returning home with the groceries, she would check the receipt to once again ensure that everything was in order, and she wouldn’t hesitate to return to the supermarket if she found an error. Reflecting on her distrust of the institutions and people of our neighborhood, I wondered amusedly about whether my mother could function as an employee and shopper at the Park Slope Food Coop.
Continuing on our uphill trek, I noticed that Park Slope was incredibly clean for a neighborhood filled with young children and dogs. I realized that in this neighborhood, children were taught from an early age about the value of recycling and the negative effects of littering. They were taught that the neighborhood belonged to them and that they had to help keep it clean in order to continue to live in a nice area. None of the residents out walking their dogs had left their homes without plastic bags. Their sense of responsibility towards Park Slope allowed community gardens and green spaces, bike paths, street art created by elementary schools, and flowers planted next to trees to thrive. Many of its inhabitants fostered personal relationships with their local bookstore owners or coffee shop baristas and had the funds to frequent artisanal gelato shops that sold their goods for $10 a pint, which allowed Park Slope to be dominated by small businesses at a time when most other neighborhoods were overrun by corporations.
I grew up with a phobia of dogs, a fear caused in part by my mother’s own fear of them, which was a vestige of growing up in a country where stray, rabid dogs are quite common, and in part by the fact that I was raised in an area where owning a dog often meant that you were a drug dealer. Walking in Park Slope, where dogs abounded, I initially felt panicked and begged Jules to cross the street every time we encountered one. However, I began to relax slightly when I noticed that random strangers would approach dog owners and ask them to pet their dogs. Instead of barking, the dogs would respond playfully. Oftentimes, children as young as three would approach dogs that were as tall as they were and pet them, which both astonished and embarrassed me.
We have finally entered Prospect Park. Jules guides me to the path on the right, which leads to some of the wilder, more forest-like parts of the park. It is early spring during our last semester together in middle school, and the isolation provided by the park comes as a pleasant relief from the culture shock I just experienced. Just as my mind begins to relax, Jules revisits an uncomfortable topic. “When will I meet your mom?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “You know that she doesn’t allow me to bring home friends from school.”
“Yeah, I find that really weird,” he replies.
As we continue walking along the increasingly narrowing path, I deliberate over whether there will ever be a good time to introduce them. Besides her qualms about having strangers over, my mother would highly disapprove of me dating before completing my education. And how would she react to a non-Turkish boyfriend? Clearly, I can’t introduce them for another couple of years … or the next decade.
We finally arrive at the point where the path ends and we are completely surrounded by trees in the early stages of bloom. I wouldn’t mind remaining here for the next century.
