Maybe this is why we stay on Long Island

It's summer 1998. I'm 11 years old. I live in a small, three-bedroom ranch in "Happy Holtsville." I go into the garage, grab my bike and say "Bye" to Mom. "Don't go to the ecology site — I don't like when you girls go there alone," she yells out. "We won't," I tell her, knowing full well that's exactly where we'll end up.

I ride my bike just three houses down and knock on my friend Michelle's door. We ride together over to Ninth Avenue and pick up our friend Christina. Then we head straight to 14th where there's a fence that's been torn down in one spot for kids like us to walk through. We stumble over the fence, empty beer bottles and Doritos bags scattered through the worn path, and walk our bikes up steep, bumpy hills. At the top of the hill, you can see for miles around in every direction. We have no phones, no water bottles, and — regretfully — no sunblock. Columbine, 9/11, the Great Recession and COVID haven't happened yet. Life is simple.

I open my eyes. It's 2026. I am 38. I live in a four-bedroom Colonial in the Patchogue-Medford school district that I can't afford. I have lived through student loan debt, many rounds of IVF, my husband's kidney transplant, and a multilevel flood that did $100,000 of damage to our new home two days after we closed. I have seen mass shootings and funerals of 6-year-olds; I watched as the Twin Towers fell and people jumped for their lives; I know good people that are no longer with us after the pandemic.

I don't like to romanticize the past. In the '90s, my parents were living paycheck to paycheck. Banks were still being robbed and shots fired at 7-Elevens. But the air was different. Today, we are a country, an Island, even families divided. Neighbors who once borrowed cups of sugar now block each other over politics. We scroll through tragedies in real time while sitting at dinner tables together, somehow feeling both connected to everyone and close to no one. 

And yet, when I drive through the old neighborhood, I still see flashes of those preteens on their bikes.

I see kids selling lemonade at the end of driveways. I see dads coaching baseball under the lights at the PAL fields. I see moms chatting at bus stops while little ones chase each other through the grass. I see people showing up with casseroles after surgeries, and fundraisers after fires. Long Island still remembers how to be a community, even if we can forget it in the comment sections.

Maybe that's why people stay here despite the absurd taxes, traffic, impossible housing market and the constant feeling that we're all one unexpected bill away from disaster. There is still something grounding about this place. Maybe it's the familiarity of bagels from Bagel Patch on Sunday mornings (they're the best, don't even argue), summers at the beach, or the way everyone somehow knows someone you know. Maybe it's because for most of us, this Island holds every version of who we've been.

The fearless 11-year-old climbing dirt hills with scraped knees and sunburned shoulders still exists somewhere inside this exhausted 38-year-old mom and wife. 

Sometimes I miss the innocence of those summers. Life wasn't perfect, but for a little while, we were allowed to believe the world was smaller, safer and slower than it really was.

The fence on 14th has since been repaired. Kids don't climb those hills anymore, but they are still there. And so am I.