Childhood Memories, Never Forgotten: How to Travel Through Time With a Single Touch by Samantha Harris

It's amazing how small simple things can sometimes transport us to another time and place. Dragging my fingers along a chain link fence instantly brings me back to warm days in Brooklyn when I would walk home from school with my grandmother or mom.

We would walk carefully along sidewalks with fallen gingko fruit while we passed beautiful brownstone buildings I imagined myself inhabiting one day. There was a school we would always pass with a clear "BOYS" and "GIRLS" entrance that puzzled me until my grandma explained that boys and girls were once schooled separately. I would drag my fingers along a chain link fence that crossed above traffic, then my siblings and I would race to the other side.

Along the way we would pass an Italian bakery owned by my classmate's family. Sometimes, if we were lucky, we would get chocolate mousse mice or Italian cookies before continuing our trek home. I remember stopping at the playground, passing the community garden, running through the baseball field and finally reaching our quieter neighborhood in Red Hook, down by the shipping yard.

The images of these places often play in my dreams. Dancing around and transforming into new settings for my dream self to explore. My memory is the only place my childhood neighborhood exists now. It has changed so much since then, completely different from what it once was. In some ways improved, in other ways quite sadly lost. I suppose this is just the way of things as we grow older.

At least I can go there every time I run my fingers across a chain link fence.

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