It was the No-Go stairway. Never, ever, go up those stairs, the last, highest stairs in our building. You better believe me and my brother did Go when we could get away with it, but we had to be lightning fast and super quiet in those echoey halls to get up and down before anyone caught us. Sometimes we sat on those stairs while waiting for Mom to come out of the apartment so we could go food shopping or maybe the library. Sitting was legal, anyway.

But one night Dad took us up those stairs, those No-Go stairs, and it was amazing to get to the top and go through that dark door that took us onto the ROOF! CAN YOU IMAGINE how emerging onto a roof at night, all secret-like, felt to this fairly sheltered kid? It was scary and rule-breaking and scary and cool and scary. The dark gravel crunched beneath my sneakered feet. It was warm but cool. The wall was too short to lean over so we had to stay away from it (scary) but we had a 360-degree view of the fireworks taking place around Flushing on Fourth of July. The blossoms weren’t too near and the crackling, booming was a bit far away, but I will never, ever forget the night we did a bit of rule breaking and had some (rare) excitement with Dad on the day we commemorate our own rule breaking that paved the way to Independence.

Yay Us! (Thanks, Dad.) ❤