Final Post: Growing Up In South St. Louis, Circa 2010

Sophia, Maeve, and Leo live in South St. Louis. They were born here and they will probably spend their entire childhoods here.

They will have a backyard that is barely 30 feet wide. Room enough for a galvanized pool, a swingset, a hammock, a deck, and a garden. They will have access to an alley through the back gate, and to the front yard and the street through the gangway. Mostly, they will play on the sidewalks in the front, riding bikes and scooters up and down the block all summer long. In the shade of street trees, they will sit on stoops and eat homemade popsicles that drip down their chins.

Their house was built in 1905 of red brick. It is a four-square construction and their bedrooms are tucked into the attic.

They will grow up in a city with one of the best public library systems in the country; the free museums and zoos are far better than a city of this size deserves. They will take public transportation and walk to south Grand to get ice cream. Their school is in a church basement ten blocks north of their house, sticking to its promise of being a neighborhood school. Full of city kids and city parents and everyone is just like them, only more so.

They might not have a yard worth mentioning, but Tower Grove Park is across Grand. And the Missouri Botanical Garden is just a mile or so away.

I thought for a long time I would raise my children in a rural location, homeschooling, going against the grain. But the longer I sit on the stoop here, the more deeply connected I become to my neighbors, the more I realize I'm a city girl. My kids are city kids. And I'm not afraid of that.

When we were looking for a house, Mary, my co-worker who lived on Hartford, whose sister Kate is Maeve's godmother now, whose niece Rachel made me the teacher I am today, said to me, "come join us in South City."

We did. And now those three kids of mine sit in my living room on a wood floor that is 105 years old, playing dominoes and watching a DVD and singing songs about photosynthesis. I feel finally like they, and I, are living an authentic life. We live here. We are here. This is who we are. Geography is destiny. Choose wisely.

30. Block Party 2008

We didn't have a block party last year. The most likely planners, my neighbors two doors down, had just gotten home from vacation and were tired. National Night Out is often so hot and humid and St. Louis. So we skipped it.

We won't skip it this year.

I hear that National Night Out came from the practice of sleeping outdoors in parks in hot summer nights. I can't even imagine doing that these days. And with all of us on the block in air conditioned brick cubes, there's no reason to.

But there are many reasons for block parties.

29. Bellerive Park to the River Facing South

And that distance out there where the earth meets the sky.

28. The Lindell Hotel

In Tower Grove, there are stones set up to look like ruins. They are. But they aren't from there. They're from the Lindell Hotel, which burned or was destroyed somehow, and remains of the hotel were trucked to Tower Grove and set up along a pool. With a fountain. And ducks.



It's strange how odd things become everyday when they become home. When we came here to take our wedding photos, it was bizarre: why was this in a park? What the heck is this??

But now we bike past them all the time. And tour buses filled with wedding parties wait for their turn to take photos.

27. Behind the Free Seats

One summer I came up to St. Louis with my brother. I think I must have been about to start my junior year of high school. We stayed at my grandmother's house in North County, and at some point in the stay, my Aunt Chris came by and picked us up.

My cousin Gina was in town, too, and she tagged along. We were a year apart in age but, I think, two years apart in school. We spent the day with Chris, who was younger than our fathers, an only child in the middle of a family of 8 kids. We wound up in Forest Park and found our way to this hall behind the free seats at the Muny:The show wasn't something Chris recognized, and we certainly didn't, but she said she'd bring us back that night. Sit in the free seats, separated from the paying customers by a chain link fence. We went back to my grandmother's house long enough to let her know what our plan was, and to pack a dinner. Days before cell phones.

The musical was "No No Nanette" which impressed me not at all. I don't remember a single thing about it. But it was a beautiful summer night, we were eating salami sandwiches and shoestring potatoes and cut up strawberries, and my parents were 900 miles away. So that in itself was enough.

I don't go to the Muny often, alas, because I have these kids and we get so busy. I've been to the Fox 4 times in the past year but haven't been to the Muny since Mike's grandparents died (they always came up a time or two each summer to see the show). And honestly, I probably won't go this year, either.

Because for some reason, sitting down closer to the front on a hot humid night, sticky and still, just isn't as fun for me compared to this mediocre musical from the free seats in a summer out of time.