The House That Built Me
Being a grown up is no fun sometimes. If I had only known what all it entails, I wouldn’t have looked so forward to becoming one.
Over the years I have written many recollections from my childhood and the connection to the home in which I was fortunate enough to be raised in. Thinking back to those days and even some that aren’t so distant, I couldn’t imagine not being able to be there at any given moment. Yet here it is.
I have the papers from where Dad purchased lot 8 in ‘Modern Acres’ in the early 1950’s. Before he met my mom, his plan was to start with just building a block garage. It soon evolved into much more. I have pencil drawings, very precise in detail, as to his vision of the home he would build. I guess Mom had something different in mind because it didn’t end up quite exactly as he planned it. But he built us a home out of mortar and blocks.
I spent my entire life calling this place home. Every birthday, Christmas, Easter egg hunt, daydream, nightmare, snow storm, tornado warning, flu bug…everything…in the same place, my entire growing up life. I know every inch of the block walls, every crack that Dad has tuck pointed over the years, the hideous colored tile floor under the carpeting that spraying pledge on was the most glorious fun on a rainy day and I know every inch of the yard surrounding the home.
I know where the concrete block is that I laid while we were adding on to the house. I was in the 3rd grade. I would spend countless hours in the evening watching Dad as he would stretch the level line, magically slap the mortar on and lay the blocks. One evening while observing, he had to go inside for a phone call and I decided I would try my hand at this magic. He made it look so easy. I know I wasn’t as impressive as he was but I did get the mud on it and I laid that block as carefully and level as I could. I was one proud little girl when he returned and saw what I had done. There’s no doubt he had to fix my contribution but he sure didn’t do it while I was looking!
There is a door jamb by the kitchen that has pencil markings with names, ages and dates. It begins with the first grandchild in the late 1970’s and includes countless growth marks for all 9 of them throughout the years. There are concrete stepping stones that have grandchildren handprints with misspelled names. Dad wasn’t a good speller but that’s what makes them even more special.
There is Dad’s shed that I can’t even begin to write about at this time. It is the place where this little girl’s dreams came true.
Mom was always taking pictures of things in the house. On nearly every roll of film she took, there would be a few, or more, pictures of just things. I always thought it was kind of a dumb thing to do. There are pictures of holiday decorations or flower arrangements in places like on top of the old television console or a book shelf. Or just a random area of the house that seemed so ordinary and unimportant at the time. I would think to myself ‘What was she thinking? Was she just wasting film?’ I find it so funny that I am now so thankful for what I thought were such dumb pictures at the time. Today I can look past the flower arrangement and I see the wall with the sun shining on it. It is coming through what I know is the open door behind her. And beyond that unseen door is a driveway of gravel. Under the mimosa tree, in that gravel is the best place ever to play with Tonka trucks. Or I see the wood grain in the door that used to be in the bedroom I shared with my brother. It is wood grain that took on many different looks on the countless nights as I drifted off to sleep hearing crickets and bullfrogs and drag race all at the same time!
And here I am. Knowing I won’t be able to lean up against the block wall of my old bedroom and feel how cool it is even on the hottest of summer days. Or stand in front of the old wall heater and not realize just how hot my backside is until I go to sit down! It just isn’t any fun to think about. So yes, it stinks. And yes, it’s a sad thing for all of us who know it is more than a building.
I will say that there have been several adult days that I thought I was doing the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Like going to the Veteran’s Center to tell my Dad that Mom had cancer and wasn’t expected to live long, watching him sit beside her in the living room of this home he built for us and hear her tell him ‘don’t cry’, watching them wheel her out the front door into a Hurst, having to tell him she had died, and then a few years later seeing him in the hospital bed and knowing what was next.
Having to say goodbye to a home isn’t nearly as difficult as those days were. After all, it is only a structure. Yet it is one of the last physical places that I have been able to go that has a real connection to both of my parents.
But all I will have to do is close my eyes…
…or look at Mom’s dumb pictures!!
