My very first home!

While I was visiting MS, dad and I took a drive past our old house.  It’s funny I only lived in this house until I was 9 years old, but there’s something about it that feels so much like home.  I think it’s that innocence of childhood feeling…no worries, no stress, no peer pressure, it was strictly just being a kid.  Memories of playing outside in the backyard that at the time seemed absolutely huge, but I now realize is much, much smaller!  Using an old dog house as my “kitchen” where I’d “cook”, playing in the ditch behind our house and catching minnows hoping to watch them grow into frogs when in reality we just killed them.  Catching lightning bugs, playing soccer in the front yard, skating on the front porch, again that seemed so much larger than it was, hitting tennis balls up against the garage door, which dad told me a thousand times not to do, but I did it anyway!  The green and yellow shag carpet!  My bedroom complete with a chalkboard where I would play school.  Christmas mornings with my parents trying to convince me that there were “sleigh tracks” in our front yard.  Many, many ballet performances with my friend down the street.  The neighbors who have now passed away.  It’s funny there have been many nights I’ve had dreams about going back through the house.  I’d give anything to knock on the door, introduce myself and see if they’d let me walk through.  I did walk back to the backyard.  The house next to ours is up for sale so I just pretended to be looking at that house while I looked over at the fence into the backyard.  It was neat and sad all at the same time.  I know the people who have lived there since have many many changes to the inside, I could tell that by trying to get a glimpse through a window (good thing no one was home)!  The outside used to be blue and is now beige.  It’s funny to hear my parents talk about how small it was, because that’s not how I remember it at all. Funny how things change as you get older.