It’s where they brought you after the hospital. Your very first bed. Your very first everything.
It’s your betta fish named Rainbow swimming in her bowl on the kitchen counter. Your rabbit named Thumper running circles around the legs of the dining table. The piano in the corner of the living room, where you practiced “Oats, Peas, Beans and Barley Grow.” The bookshelf that nearly fell on you.
It’s is the Old Farmer’s Almanac in your dad’s study, with its wispy gold-edged pages. Your bedroom window looking out over a giant tree and the neighborhood basketball court. The teeny tiny snow man you made on top of the hedges when you were four. The vanity counter you used to sit on while your mom dried and brushed your hair after a bath.
It’s chicken pox and sleepovers and Easter Egg hunts. Sitting alone in the car in a darkened garage because you yelled “I hate you!” during a fight. The calendar in the hallway that everyone forgot to update. The soft blue sofa that you jumped and slept and watched TV on.
It’s the tears you cried when you learned that you were moving. Your certainty that nowhere else would ever be as perfect. The moving truck slowly filling up while you sat inside pouting. The staircase that you hugged goodbye.
It’s the playground you took your husband to the first time he came to visit your hometown. It’s the gazebo you still drive by sometimes.
It’s a collection of old memories, faded and dusty like photographs in a shoebox. But precious nevertheless.
7 responses to “Home (part 1)”
Love your vignettes, Kristan! I’ve been thinking about home lately, and what kind I’m building for my little girl. There sure are a lot of memories to make.
“and what kind I’m building for my little girl” – Exactly. More on this in “Home (part 4)” haha. (Which I haven’t written yet, but the framework of it is in my head.)
I’m sure you are making a GREAT home, and precious memories, for your adorable little bean.
I’ve always kind of minded (in a very small way) that I don’t remember my first home. My parents only lived there for six months after my birth, before moving to another city. I remember all the other places I’ve lived, but there’s that little, tiny gap right at the beginning. (Maybe there’s a story there…)
One of my (many) favorite moments in the Roger Zelazny novel This Immortal is between two characters, from different races (different planets) who don’t like each other. One is grudgingly conducting the other on a tour of post-apocalyptic Earth, and one night he says that the village they will be going to the next day is where he was born.
“Home is a universal concept. I appreciate that,” the blue-skinned alien overlord replies, and it’s a rare moment of connection betwen the characters. Nicely handled.
I think there IS a story there. ;)
Lovely anecdote!
I always love reading these from you. You’re so good at evoking a feeling and space. Thanks for sharing!
(My couch growing up was blue too!)
Lovely. Thank you.
I love this. As always with your vignettes, they transport me to another place and make me feel like I’m right there with you. :)