Vignette #2 -This House

 
This House
 
This house has green shutters and a fence out front. This house is white with a magnolia tree in the yard. This house with the fruit wallpaper, and the pink bathroom. This house is bursting with good memories. I’ve never lived in another house, never even had a different bedroom in this house. There is a big yard out front, catching butterflies on muggy August days, playing on a slip-n-slide with a best friend that once lived across the street. A large backyard is where I rode my fist bike, crashing on the turns and running into trees. A crumbling brick patio where pulling weeds was done while steaks cooked on the grill. When I was little this house was a great land for exploring, mystical lands of mountains and rivers, I even had a fort near my bed, I’d hide from thunderstorms, chase away evil villains. Then this house became home to a million small toys with large eyes and bobble- heads. Wedged into corners, stuck under couch cushions, they waited for me to come and find them. The front yard was for making bunny houses, and climbing trees. The back for hiding in the clearing behind the wall of brambles. Soon the brambles were cleared for a soccer goal, orange cones dotting the grass like a runway. A runway for some plane that will carry me away, over the world, breaking through the clouds, soaring near the sun. I stayed outside for hours, kick, dribble, kick, dribble, run. I thought I was so much more than I was. I somersaulted right into days fishing in the lake a short walk away from this house. This house with the big yard with the forrest in the back, the forrest I ripped through muddying my clothes, expanding my world. When I was in the forrest the house never existed, there was no time to sit idle in a house, only time to grow, and run, and jump, and sing, and play, and explore, and live life without taking a breath. Finally I realized that life enjoys some breaths, some polite, petite pauses, so I took them. The woods became obscure as did the front yard, a shadow in the back of a picture, and this house became more focused. My bedroom was now my forrest, with little nooks, and places that had never been explored before. The hours I spent there flew by. Now this house is ten miles from the nearest Starbucks, far away from my friends, too small, and smells like uncooked pasta, however this house will always be close enough to the family I love, and strong enough to hang on to the memories that will always find home in the fruit wallpaper, and the pink bathroom.