Margarita Persico.com

As a child on Bergen Street, in Brooklyn, NY, I had so many dreams. One of them was of becoming a hairdresser. At five or six, I would tease, comb and spray my mother’s hair. She never complained, no matter how tangled and messy I made it.

Several years later, I changed my mind and wanted to be a fashion designer. I designed clothes for my fashion dolls and sewn them. I dreamed of owning many Barbie dolls. I only had two fashion dolls and none were Barbies – we couldn’t afford it, my dad said.

Instead I had Stacy and Skippy, two of Barbie’s five sisters. Stacy was a gift from my cousin’s aunt. Skippy, which was my dad’s gift, had long blond hair that I would wash, comb and set. I designed their clothes and many times even hand sewn them. Once I entered one of them on a school contest, and she won! I won! Soon after, my interest in fashion design faded, but not my love for my dolls, which I kept at my parents’ house until they died.

These dolls had been my companions since I was perhaps 7. I married them to my brother’s GI Joes and their Chief Cherokee boy dolls. When I was 8, I wrote tiny Barbie-size books for them and prayed with them.

As I got older, my dreams changed as fast as a revolving door at a busy building. But I was fortunate. I worked hard and stayed focused. Many dreams came true.

Childhood home decades later (Margarita Persico photo.)

On the summer of 2009, I fulfilled another dream – to see my early childhood home. In July, I stood in front of the building after being away for decades.

The brownstone building was almost unrecognizable, now covered by a huge oak tree. The wrought iron fire escape balconies seemed the same, but the fence was new. The aluminum trashcans that once stood in front of the fence were now replaced by rubber ones, placed behind the new and longer wrought iron fence.

The building’s exterior looked fresher and cleaner. The windows on the first floor were now protected with handsome wrought iron bars. The number on the door was professionally placed, instead of the white hand painted number on the brownstone’s doorframe.

Money has given the neighborhood a new life. The cars on the street were modern; some were luxury vehicles and others sporty. Bikes lined fences nearby. The train station on the corner of Bergen and Smith Streets was all that it’s left that exuded familiarity. Where Fidel, the Cuban exile, had his ‘colmado,’ grocery store, a residential building stood. Two grocery stores now serve the neighborhood – one, organic, across the street and another adjacent to the train station.

The neighborhood has long been gentrified. Now fancy stores and up scale restaurants replaced the mom and pop businesses. I wondered how the growth happened. Did neighbors resist? I could not help but parallel the changes to mine — a long journey of struggles, hard work and returning back to the States from Puerto Rico where I spent a decade. A few weeks before visiting my beloved neighborhood, I graduated with a master’s degree in liberal arts, journalism from Harvard.

And like in the dream days of childhood with my fashion dolls where I wrote for them, now I write for others and about other people’s dreams – and accomplishments.

[Part 1]