"The House that Built Me"

 

This is my childhood home and the home that my sister's and I grew up in. Now, this is the new siding they put on the house a year before my parent's moved out. When growing up, this house was a "two-toned" house that had God awful grayish-green siding on the top half and "puke-up-egg-yolk", yellow on the bottom half. The siding was very ugly and everyone knew our house because it was the only two-toned house on the block. : ) When we grew up in this house, the house looked like this before the new siding was put on.

Nonetheless, the colors did not matter because this house was our home. It is over 100 years old and with every old house, you will find minor things, but this house really cemented our childhood. This is where I spent many days playing in the front yard,or helping my Dad tear apart cars on the weekends. It is a 4 bedroom house, and upstairs, in a small, back bedroom is where I spent much of my time absorbed in my music. I learned how to ride a bike at this house, had my first sleep-overs, met my first "best friend", had my first date at this house and my first kiss on these door steps. No matter what happened in life, I knew I had a home to go to and a place within it of my own in which I could escape.

I miss this house dearly, and I drive by it at least once a week as it now has a family living there. From the years of 1991-2005, this was The House that Built Me. There is a small yard in the back where Dad had at one time a shed, a make shift bike shed that him and I built to store all of our bikes, and a pop-up-enclosed tent to store his race car in over winter...The only thing that I did not like was having to mow the lawn/rake the yard in the summer and shovel the sidewalks in the winter.

At night, if it was really quiet, you could hear the house settling and it would make these subtle creaks, which sounded creepy at first, but then you got used to it. Our stairs creaked as you walked up or down them, so my parents always knew when one of us was awake or tried to come downstairs when we should have been sleeping...During the summer when it would storm, the lightning would penetrate throughout the house and the sound of the thunder and rain was enough to sooth you to sleep.

The house is on a corner lot, and across the street from an open field and train tracks. When we first moved in the summer of 1991, none of us could stand the obnoxiously LOUD trains or the fact that they would be "playing" (running and clanking other carts at full speed causing a loud banging sound) all hours of the night. After a few months, we got used to it and learned how to tune out the noise. Then, we "needed" to hear the trains running at night in order to fall asleep as we have grown accustomed to the noise.

I had moved out and moved back home a couple times for a short period between apartments that I was living in, but moving away from those noises and that comfort of home was hard to get used to. Sure there were minor things wrong with the house as any house that is over 100yrs old would have, but as imperfect as it was, it was perfect at the same time for my sister's and I to grow up in a safe and secure home like this...I think that this is where I developed the need to have "white noise" at night or at least the hum of a fan in order to sleep. I cannot sleep in dead silence.

My parents have not lived in this house for going on 4yrs now, and after they moved out, the house was completely remodeled, new wiring, and everything brought up to 2012 code of living. The walls were completely painted over, the kitchen was demolished and extended out towards the back yard, the bathrooms were completely remodeled and all the other rooms were completely changed as well. When this house was up for sale, I saw the photos that the realtor's posted on their site and it looked NOTHING like the house I grew to know as HOME. I cried when I saw the photo of my what I thought was my old bedroom, but could barely make it out until I saw the window, then I knew.

Every memory of my family living there was wiped out and seems as if it did not exist...I know times change and people renovate/remodel places all of the time. It's completely normal, but it just struck me as hard when I saw that our house looked like a completely different one. Our neighbor still lives in the house across the street and she has become friends with the new family. I think that is awesome. : )

There is a song by Miranda Lambert called "The House that Built Me" which speaks about this very thing. I have thought many times of going to the house and introducing myself to the lady who lives there with her family, explain to her that I used to live in this house and that I grew up here. Then I would ask her if I could come in and take a walk through the house, just to see what it looks like today. I have thought about it, however, I am not sure if I could actually go up to the door, knock on it and actually ask to see the house.

Memories are an amazing thing to have. It not only allows you to remember important things like dates and information, but it also allows you to relive parts of your life through those memories, that you otherwise would not be able to look back on. I am not sure if I will ever actually do that or not, but when my parents moved out, I kept my personal copy of my house key Why? Because they change the locks on the doors when a family moves out of a house; but more importantly,  because it's my small "piece" of the house that I built me all those years ago. : )


~Melissa