Maria Ingraffia

   I spent the first nine years of my life in a middle-class neighborhood in Arlington Heights, Illinois. My father was a hardworking entrepreneur who had started from absolutely nothing, and made a good life for my mother, younger brother, and me. We had friendly neighbors, a yard to play in, and a park across the street.
   When I was about 8 years old, my father opened his third grocery stor, and that’s when things started to change a bit. I remember little things like my parents redoing the kitchen cabinets, getting a new playground set, new bikes, and new appliances, but I never thought anything of it. I also remember my father being home less and less. A few months after the new store opened, one of my best friends Jenna came over to play. She walked into our living room, the same one she’d been in over a hundred times, and her jaw dropped as she stared at the new big-screen television we had just gotten. At the time, I really didn’t see why Jenna was so shocked. I thought everybody had things like that.
   A couple weeks later, I went over to Jenna’s house to play. Jenna lived about five minutes away from me in a neighborhood that looked very similar to mine. Jenna and I came inside for a snack after an intense game of hide-and-seek with the neighborhood kids. Her mother, who was always very sweet, asked us if we wanted to watch television while we ate our homemade cookies and milk. As soon as her mother finished the question, Jenna blurted out, “Mom! Maria has a huge big screen TV at her house!” Jenna’s mother replied, “Wow. Well Maria is a very lucky girl then.” I remember not saying a word, and managing to smile awkwardly. The whole conversation had made me really uncomfortable, and I didn’t even understand why.
   In the months following, many things continued to change for me. That summer my parents told me that they were building a house in another town; a better town. I remember going to the appointments with the architect, and seeing the blueprints of our new house. It looked about 10 times the size of our home in Arlington Heights, but my 8-year-old brain concluded it was simply because the papers were so big. About a year later, I realized it wasn’t just the paper that was big.
  Living in South Barrington is a lot different than Arlington Heights. It never felt like home here. The distance between my house and one of my neighbor’s houses here is probably the length of my whole street in Arlington Heights. I’ve met two kinds of people here in Barrington. There are people like myself, who care less about materialistic things because they were never forbidden to us, or the people who care only of materialistic things because they were never forbidden to them.

~ By Maria Ingraffia