The Heights and Intentional Acts of Kindness

Auburn Hills will always be “the Heights” to me.

Some of us moved away after high school and returned to raise our children in the Heights. Some moved away young and remember the Heights and all the parades, celebrations, and stores with happy nostalgia. Some stayed in the area. Some grew up there, raised children, and moved away with rich memories.

I’m the last.

I’ve been away well over 20 years, and live in Central Florida where weather skips winter altogether, moving from early autumn to late spring, and birds sing year-round. I think of the Heights often, with love, but see it in my mind as it was, not only when I moved away, but especially how it looked when I was a child.

I’ll be visiting for a week in my childhood neighborhood, and although I expect changes (and have been warned), will superimpose “my” Heights onto the current Auburn Hills.

Don’t we all do that in our memory?

For those of us who’ve stayed in the area, changes happen and are incorporated, welcome or not. For returning Heights’ people, the shocks can be devastating. For example, what happened to Adams Road? And the downtown area, which was officially “the Heights” when I was young? We rode our bikes to “the Heights” for a visit to Short's or Thomas Variety at least once a week in the summertime.

My unexpected and welcome visit is an intentional act of kindness. My niece invited me to celebrate her wedding, after years of hard work raising her boys on her own, and I’m delighted to be part of her happiness, their happiness. She paid for my airfare, so I will be able to see my brother (after two years), my aunt (after at least 30 years), stay with my sister-in-law, and set Mom’s ashes to rest in Perry Mount Park cemetery.

Why am I sharing this? It’s not our usual local history, which we all enjoy, but mine, and the Heights are such a major part of me that even the years away can’t dim that.

I’ll try not to dwell on everything that’s gone. The corner store where we took our nickels and bought penny candy in a tiny paper bag, and where my friend’s mom sent her for bread and milk, telling the owner to add the cost to their account. (Imagine that happening anywhere today.) Passing the Auburn Hills Elementary School and the school hills across the street on our way downtown.

Frank’s Nursery for a Christmas tree when I was the parent. The Pontiac State Bank where we had all our accounts. (Wrote Dad a check for a million dollars one year on his birthday. He teased me about that being the reason the bank went under.)

North Adams Road, passing familiar houses until you reached the beautiful wooded areas with curves and a hopeful view of the white deer at Meadowbrook. Neighbors gone decades, friendly, rarely seen, or threatening buckshot to anyone who stole one more bunch of Concord grapes. Bridges’ horse farm. All corner markets.

I intend to make the most of my visit, (although I won’t have access to my computer so next week’s post will be delayed). The offer of a visit for such a special occasion brought to mind other acts of kindness that stick in my memory.

The first time I reached the pickup window to learn that the car before me paid for my lunch. Mom letting us kids ride to the top of the Riker Building downtown Pontiac during a dental or doctor visit. We thought we stood on the top of the world as we peered out of ten-story windows on trees and streets across the city.

The woman at St. Michael’s in Pontiac who kindly pinned a tissue to my head with bobby pins when I showed up for Mass with no hat—you girls remember those straw hats, wound with ribbons that fell from the back, held on by elastic under your chin. The teacher who took us to the Wisner House on a field trip and talked about the underground railroad.

Even Mom hauling me back to the corner store with my stolen tiny plastic doll, and making me admit the theft, give it back, and promise never to steal again. I was so humiliated, I never forgot that and never did steal again. I remember the store owner thanking me and offering me the doll for my honesty, and Mom behind me, shaking her head at him. She was right. It was a necessary and well-learned lesson.

The same Mom who would return to a store if she received too much change. “The clerk is responsible,” she’d say. “Besides, it’s wrong.”

My neighborhood friends, brothers and little sisters, and our freedom to explore our local area. The names I read on this site who were part of my years there.

See? Just thinking about going back for a week triggers many, many happy memories.

No matter how much my Heights has changed—and it has—underneath the image I carry are the bones of our home town.

Not Auburn Hills, but the Heights.

And thank you to all of you and to Joanie Sullivan Todd for this wonderful site which allows us to continue to share our memories, our lives in the Heights, and how it’s become part of who we are.

I’ll wave at you as I ride around next week!