Hi!
You don't know me, but I lived in the house you own now from approximately 1988-1993. It was the first address I memorized and is the place of my earliest memories.
I actually have no idea how many children before or after me came into conscious memory in the same house. Probably a lot, since the house was built in the 1950s. I have thought about this a lot, now that I have my own house and my own baby whose first memories will be in this physical place.
I remember being three there. When I say three, I mean three years old, but I also remember being just the three of us, Mommy, Daddy, Ellen. I remember running to the top of the stairs when I was learning to get dressed and hollering down for my mom to tell me if the item of clothing was forward or backward. I would hold it up and she would either say "Yes!" or "Other way.". I remember my mom telling me to put her hand on her belly to feel the baby kicking, and I never could.
I remember building a garden out of cinderblocks in the backyard, planting the seeds, and I remember harvesting carrots. The garden was in the northwest corner of the backyard, near the fence that we shared with our neighbor Charlie. I didn't know cardinal directions then, but I know them now. I wonder what's in the northwest corner of your yard now.
Charlie was the neighbor to the west. He was kind and elderly and had no children of his own. My parents often went over to his house to chat. Sometimes I would go too, my parents begging me to sit still, but it was so hard for a four year old. Instead I would trace the intricate carvings on the wooden frames of his furniture. Or I would lay on the floor and play with the fake fruit that sat in a bowl under an end-table.
Years later, when Charlie passed away, my parents would become the executors of his estate, a true testament to the power of being neighbors. It was from Charlie's house that we acquired the bed that I slept on from when I was seven or eight until I moved out of their house. The end-table with the fake fruit went to my grandparents, and when they passed away, I knew I wanted it. It became more rickety over the years, and we recently parted with it, but the memories remain.
I had my fourth and fifth birthdays in that house, and maybe my sixth, but I don't remember very well. At one of my birthdays, an older neighbor girl that I was dear friends with brought a Skip It. Do you remember these? It was a plastic ring that went around your ankle with a ball on the other end with a counter. You would try to hop over the ball as you swung it around. When they were popular, I did not have the motor skills to be good at it, so I mostly remember them as a very frustrating experience.
That same neighbor girl used to come over and play paper dolls with me in the little room or office in the back corner of the first floor.
It was from the window of this house at 622 that my parents pointed to the hospital where my baby brother would be born. He came home to this house. So many memories with him here. Running around the basement, falling down the basement stairs, swinging in the back yard.
It was in the room to the left of the stairs where I put lotion on my stuffed lion one night and ruined it. Does that room still have a clothes chute in the floor? While my family lived there, a man stopped by who had also come into conscious memory in the house. He asked about the clothes chute and my mom shared that she was afraid of us falling down it, so kept a dresser on top of it. The man fondly remembered that when he was a child, he and his siblings would slide down the clothes chute. He was very tall and sturdy, so it was hard to imagine, but of course he would have been much smaller then.
Here's something you may not want to know about the bathroom upstairs. I remember one of my friends (a boy) from preschool or maybe church coming over and peeing in the shower. I was both horrified and filled with amazement.
When we moved out of 622, just up the street, one of the things we had to fix was the bathtub. We had always used it with a rubber disc that sealed off the drain. I remember asking my parents about it during one of my last baths there. They explained that the purchaser of the house wanted a working bathtub drain. We currently have the plastic disc that we use to stop up the bathtub in my house. Maybe someday Sammy and I will have a similar conversation about it.
I have so many more memories in the house - birthdays with grandparents in the dining room, making cookies with my mom, eating Nilla wafers with my dad while watching airplane trails. Know that your house holds all of these memories.
And yet, it also doesn't. The memories are stored in my heart and mind. It's like Charlie's table - I was able to get rid of it because I knew that getting rid of it would not erase the stories.
I hope you enjoy the time you live in that house. It will always be special to me. May it also be special to you.
You don't know me, but I lived in the house you own now from approximately 1988-1993. It was the first address I memorized and is the place of my earliest memories.
I actually have no idea how many children before or after me came into conscious memory in the same house. Probably a lot, since the house was built in the 1950s. I have thought about this a lot, now that I have my own house and my own baby whose first memories will be in this physical place.
I remember being three there. When I say three, I mean three years old, but I also remember being just the three of us, Mommy, Daddy, Ellen. I remember running to the top of the stairs when I was learning to get dressed and hollering down for my mom to tell me if the item of clothing was forward or backward. I would hold it up and she would either say "Yes!" or "Other way.". I remember my mom telling me to put her hand on her belly to feel the baby kicking, and I never could.
I remember building a garden out of cinderblocks in the backyard, planting the seeds, and I remember harvesting carrots. The garden was in the northwest corner of the backyard, near the fence that we shared with our neighbor Charlie. I didn't know cardinal directions then, but I know them now. I wonder what's in the northwest corner of your yard now.
Charlie was the neighbor to the west. He was kind and elderly and had no children of his own. My parents often went over to his house to chat. Sometimes I would go too, my parents begging me to sit still, but it was so hard for a four year old. Instead I would trace the intricate carvings on the wooden frames of his furniture. Or I would lay on the floor and play with the fake fruit that sat in a bowl under an end-table.
Years later, when Charlie passed away, my parents would become the executors of his estate, a true testament to the power of being neighbors. It was from Charlie's house that we acquired the bed that I slept on from when I was seven or eight until I moved out of their house. The end-table with the fake fruit went to my grandparents, and when they passed away, I knew I wanted it. It became more rickety over the years, and we recently parted with it, but the memories remain.
I had my fourth and fifth birthdays in that house, and maybe my sixth, but I don't remember very well. At one of my birthdays, an older neighbor girl that I was dear friends with brought a Skip It. Do you remember these? It was a plastic ring that went around your ankle with a ball on the other end with a counter. You would try to hop over the ball as you swung it around. When they were popular, I did not have the motor skills to be good at it, so I mostly remember them as a very frustrating experience.
That same neighbor girl used to come over and play paper dolls with me in the little room or office in the back corner of the first floor.
It was from the window of this house at 622 that my parents pointed to the hospital where my baby brother would be born. He came home to this house. So many memories with him here. Running around the basement, falling down the basement stairs, swinging in the back yard.
It was in the room to the left of the stairs where I put lotion on my stuffed lion one night and ruined it. Does that room still have a clothes chute in the floor? While my family lived there, a man stopped by who had also come into conscious memory in the house. He asked about the clothes chute and my mom shared that she was afraid of us falling down it, so kept a dresser on top of it. The man fondly remembered that when he was a child, he and his siblings would slide down the clothes chute. He was very tall and sturdy, so it was hard to imagine, but of course he would have been much smaller then.
Here's something you may not want to know about the bathroom upstairs. I remember one of my friends (a boy) from preschool or maybe church coming over and peeing in the shower. I was both horrified and filled with amazement.
When we moved out of 622, just up the street, one of the things we had to fix was the bathtub. We had always used it with a rubber disc that sealed off the drain. I remember asking my parents about it during one of my last baths there. They explained that the purchaser of the house wanted a working bathtub drain. We currently have the plastic disc that we use to stop up the bathtub in my house. Maybe someday Sammy and I will have a similar conversation about it.
I have so many more memories in the house - birthdays with grandparents in the dining room, making cookies with my mom, eating Nilla wafers with my dad while watching airplane trails. Know that your house holds all of these memories.
And yet, it also doesn't. The memories are stored in my heart and mind. It's like Charlie's table - I was able to get rid of it because I knew that getting rid of it would not erase the stories.
I hope you enjoy the time you live in that house. It will always be special to me. May it also be special to you.
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