They say a house has to be at least 25 years or older to be
considered an "old" house. But to me, the house that I grew up in is
older than what feels like a lifetime. As a young child I remember
catching frogs in the pond behind my house until it was dark outside in
the summer, capturing lightning bugs in mason jars and eating a worm I
dug out of a mud pie because my neighbor told me it would give me super
powers. I remember the first and only time my dad and my Uncle Joe went
swimming in that scum layered, green pond and coming out covered with
leeches. Summers were magical in this house, and my memories are
endless.
Winters were just as fun as summers on Hinchey road. When the pond finally froze over and the snow had been cleared away with a bulldozer, it was time to break out the ice skates. Dad bought me hockey skates one year before Christmas and taught me how to ice skate on the pond. I always told him I wanted the figure skates instead and sometimes I would even pretend to be a figure skater, attempting to do twirls and spins when no one was looking. When it really snows in Michigan, basically every school in the state is closed for two days. Literally people cannot get out of their drive ways. Jack and I loved playing in the snow. Every Christmas we would hook up the toboggan to the back of dad's old four door pick up truck with some rope and he would take us in the back forty acres and drive in circles until we either fell off or our hands were too cold to hold on anymore. I used to love going outside after a fresh snow fall and scooping it up from the cleanest place I could find. Then I would bring it inside, put sprinkles and whipped cream on it and eat it out of a bowl like ice cream. I'll never forget Mom's snow animals either. Mom, Jack and I created a life size whale out of snow one year. There are pictures of us sitting on top of it, almost four feet high.
Mom has told me that when I was little I used to love to make cookies for my dad on Valentine's day. She told me about one particular time that my sugar cookies were more special than usual because I had added a secret ingredient to them. Apparently I had been mashing the dough of the cookies with my fingers, stuck one finger up my nose and shoved it right back in the cookie dough and said "Boy is daddy gonna love these". Yes, you guessed it right, shes has it on video.
Birthdays and holidays were my favorite when they were celebrated at my house because that meant that Mom had to do all the cooking. The day before somebody's birthday she would stay up all night baking and frosting a spectacular 3D cake of some sort. One year she made a standing up 3D race car cake for my brother, the Elmo cake was pretty cool too. Mom always made everything from scratch, and to this day, she is the best cook in Livingston County.
In the middle of the kitchen was a small table with two hand painted chairs that my mother had probably painted at least a dozen times. My brother and I sat at that tiny table everyday until I was at least 12 years old. We would eat at it together, play games, and everyday my little adorable brother would draw a picture of something. One day, Mom and I caught him singing his own version of "Jesus Loves Me" to himself while he was drawing. He was probably only three years old at the time. Mom has it recorded on a tape somewhere.
Mom designed everything in our house, from the curtains, to the comforters, to the striped walls and the hand made couch covers, my mother is one of the most talented and creative people that I have ever known. She hated "store bought" anything. Everything had to be custom, or it was tacky to her. Dad would come home from a long weekend vacation somewhere or a work outing and the dining room would be red instead of yellow, the floors would be stained black and white checkered instead of their natural wooden brown color, and the furniture would be completely reupholstered. Of course dad was usually upset or annoyed with her at first, but soon it didn't come as a surprise to him when something was completely decorated differently the next time he came home.
I remember watching the birth of my first horse out by the barn one spring day in April. My Papa taught me how to ride, how to train and take care of the horses he boarded for his friends and neighbors. Riding was my favorite thing to do in the fall. I loved the adrenaline rush of racing the horses down the road and through the fields, most of the time riding bare back with nothing but a bridle and an old pair of cowboy boots. I used to climb up on top of the metal fence, shake a bucket of grain and yell at the top of my lungs, "Butterscotch!" and she would come running up over the hill, along with the rest of the stampede. A grown man was more afraid of her than I was. Horses didn't intimidate me much, I had been raised around them my entire life. Growing up on a farm had its advantages and disadvantages as well. We had goats and chickens, horses and barn cats and of course dogs. There would occasionally be the wild animal that Mom would feel sorry for and bring home to sort of "bring back to life" and love. Of all the animals we had in my house from the baby bunny named Christopher that Mom caught in the woods to the chickens running around in the basement, I would have to say the craziest animal we ever had was a two day old fawn that was found in the middle of the dirt road driving home from school one day. It was so tiny and frail laying in the middle of the road and it was no surprise to any of us that my mother's bleeding heart wanted to keep the poor thing. She was like a little kid that was at the pound desperately wanting to take home a cute little puppy. Well, we brought the little thing home and I gave her the name Eleanor. People never believed me when I told them that my mother's new pet was a baby deer that she carried around like a dog in the front seat of her car everywhere she went. Eleanor used to cuddle up to my very vicious, small Jack Russell Terrier, fondly named Lulu. Now Lulu wasn't exactly the epitome of a fun loving, caring dog that everyone adored, not to mention she hated any other living, breathing, animal that even glimpsed her way for a second. But for some odd reason, Lulu was a mother to Eleanor and treated her as her baby. You would find them snuggled up next to each other in a blanket behind a doorway in the house at night before bedtime. I swear the sight was the darnest thing.
There was something about coming home to my house that gave me comfort, or a kind of "phew!" feeling after traveling back from a long vacation or being gone all throughout the day. For a long time, the walls in my bedroom were painted cherry red and I had a red and white duvet cover to match that my mother had sewn when I was little. On the walls hung art that Mom painted when she was a teenager and my white dressers and maple wood bed were hers when she was a kid. I remember the new wood floors that my daddy installed and the way that they creaked loudly when I would try to tiptoe into the living room on Christmas morning to peak at what Santa had brought me. As I got older, the color of my bedroom walls changed from red to yellow, yellow to lime green, and finally lime green to watermelon pink which is what they still are to this day. I loved pictures of any kind, from magazine ads and celebrity shoots to old pictures of the family and shots taken in Paris and London of my grandmother. My walls were covered with them from the ceiling to the base boards until a few years ago when Mom decided to take them all down and repaint again. Now, almost a twenty year old, I still come home to visit my hot pink room with bright yellow curtains and an eighties picture of Johnny Depp hanging on my old memo board.
As a kid, I loved to be alone. Because my house was practically in the middle of no where, this was not a difficult thing to do. When I was little I used to run away from my parents up in my tree house that Dad built me when we first moved in. It was complete with a pole and a yellow slide and a ladder leading down into a sand box where I hid all of my treasures that were usually found in the pond. I'd take a blanket and some candy from the candy jar and usually stay up there until I got tired or hungry or my German Shepherd would come and get me and bark til I came down. When I was probably 12 or 13 I started "running away" a little further down the street to the old cemetery on the corner of Schafer and Hinchey. I used to read the gravestones and sit under the huge oak tree and write poems or read chapter books there. I love that old cemetery and I cried the day that they cut my oak tree down because it was growing to far into the road. I still walk down there every once in a while to think and even pray.
In Michigan, there are 7 months of winter, 2 months of summer, a month of fall, and 2 months that I like to call the rainy season, also known as spring. Since my house was built on marsh, rain made the pond overflow and spill into the yard, causing the back yard to be a swamp until late July. Since before I can remember every birthday party I ever had was rained out. It rained like it snowed in Michigan. My friends and I used to put our bathing suits on and stand under the gutters on the front porch and wash each others hair with the water that collected on the roof during a thunderstorm after jumping in just about every puddle we could jump in on Hinchey road. I remember taking the old go-karts out on the dirt roads and sloshing through the mud all the way around the block until finally we were covered from head to toe in swamp water.
The older I became, the more I desired to leave that old farm house and never come back. I suppose most teenagers go through the same experience. I never ran too far away from home though, and I always came back. My teenage years on the farm seemed endless sometimes, but I wouldn't trade my memories for anything.
I remember getting ready for my very first date. I was sixteen years old with lipstick and red hair that hung to the middle of my back. I had spent all day looking into the mirror that once hung above my crib, perfecting the art of makeup. He was finally here, and I was finally ready. Tucker's green car pulled in the driveway and I could tell my daddy wasn't the least bit excited as I was. Tucker came to the transparent front door and I opened it, my hands shaking and sweaty. Of course, there was Dad, sitting at a bar stool just waiting and staring. Dad sat there then, and has always sat in the same stool, waiting for my dates to arrive.
So, in a nutshell, my house has become my home- I suppose it's not because Momma painted the walls a dozen times, and redecorated the basement, but because of my memories made there growing up. I'll miss that house dearly because I blew out the candles on my 5th birthday there, learned how to ride a bike in the driveway, got a sunburn on the back deck, took a shower under the gutters in the rain, lost my dog under my bed, and knelt beside my bed and became a Christian.
My memories will go on, and my house will stay put. Perhaps a little girl or boy will occupy my old room with the faded wooden floors, and the yardstick written in the closet on the wall. But wherever I am, whatever I do, the little yellow house with the big oak tree out back, and the address missing on the mailbox will always be my home.
Winters were just as fun as summers on Hinchey road. When the pond finally froze over and the snow had been cleared away with a bulldozer, it was time to break out the ice skates. Dad bought me hockey skates one year before Christmas and taught me how to ice skate on the pond. I always told him I wanted the figure skates instead and sometimes I would even pretend to be a figure skater, attempting to do twirls and spins when no one was looking. When it really snows in Michigan, basically every school in the state is closed for two days. Literally people cannot get out of their drive ways. Jack and I loved playing in the snow. Every Christmas we would hook up the toboggan to the back of dad's old four door pick up truck with some rope and he would take us in the back forty acres and drive in circles until we either fell off or our hands were too cold to hold on anymore. I used to love going outside after a fresh snow fall and scooping it up from the cleanest place I could find. Then I would bring it inside, put sprinkles and whipped cream on it and eat it out of a bowl like ice cream. I'll never forget Mom's snow animals either. Mom, Jack and I created a life size whale out of snow one year. There are pictures of us sitting on top of it, almost four feet high.
Mom has told me that when I was little I used to love to make cookies for my dad on Valentine's day. She told me about one particular time that my sugar cookies were more special than usual because I had added a secret ingredient to them. Apparently I had been mashing the dough of the cookies with my fingers, stuck one finger up my nose and shoved it right back in the cookie dough and said "Boy is daddy gonna love these". Yes, you guessed it right, shes has it on video.
Birthdays and holidays were my favorite when they were celebrated at my house because that meant that Mom had to do all the cooking. The day before somebody's birthday she would stay up all night baking and frosting a spectacular 3D cake of some sort. One year she made a standing up 3D race car cake for my brother, the Elmo cake was pretty cool too. Mom always made everything from scratch, and to this day, she is the best cook in Livingston County.
In the middle of the kitchen was a small table with two hand painted chairs that my mother had probably painted at least a dozen times. My brother and I sat at that tiny table everyday until I was at least 12 years old. We would eat at it together, play games, and everyday my little adorable brother would draw a picture of something. One day, Mom and I caught him singing his own version of "Jesus Loves Me" to himself while he was drawing. He was probably only three years old at the time. Mom has it recorded on a tape somewhere.
Mom designed everything in our house, from the curtains, to the comforters, to the striped walls and the hand made couch covers, my mother is one of the most talented and creative people that I have ever known. She hated "store bought" anything. Everything had to be custom, or it was tacky to her. Dad would come home from a long weekend vacation somewhere or a work outing and the dining room would be red instead of yellow, the floors would be stained black and white checkered instead of their natural wooden brown color, and the furniture would be completely reupholstered. Of course dad was usually upset or annoyed with her at first, but soon it didn't come as a surprise to him when something was completely decorated differently the next time he came home.
I remember watching the birth of my first horse out by the barn one spring day in April. My Papa taught me how to ride, how to train and take care of the horses he boarded for his friends and neighbors. Riding was my favorite thing to do in the fall. I loved the adrenaline rush of racing the horses down the road and through the fields, most of the time riding bare back with nothing but a bridle and an old pair of cowboy boots. I used to climb up on top of the metal fence, shake a bucket of grain and yell at the top of my lungs, "Butterscotch!" and she would come running up over the hill, along with the rest of the stampede. A grown man was more afraid of her than I was. Horses didn't intimidate me much, I had been raised around them my entire life. Growing up on a farm had its advantages and disadvantages as well. We had goats and chickens, horses and barn cats and of course dogs. There would occasionally be the wild animal that Mom would feel sorry for and bring home to sort of "bring back to life" and love. Of all the animals we had in my house from the baby bunny named Christopher that Mom caught in the woods to the chickens running around in the basement, I would have to say the craziest animal we ever had was a two day old fawn that was found in the middle of the dirt road driving home from school one day. It was so tiny and frail laying in the middle of the road and it was no surprise to any of us that my mother's bleeding heart wanted to keep the poor thing. She was like a little kid that was at the pound desperately wanting to take home a cute little puppy. Well, we brought the little thing home and I gave her the name Eleanor. People never believed me when I told them that my mother's new pet was a baby deer that she carried around like a dog in the front seat of her car everywhere she went. Eleanor used to cuddle up to my very vicious, small Jack Russell Terrier, fondly named Lulu. Now Lulu wasn't exactly the epitome of a fun loving, caring dog that everyone adored, not to mention she hated any other living, breathing, animal that even glimpsed her way for a second. But for some odd reason, Lulu was a mother to Eleanor and treated her as her baby. You would find them snuggled up next to each other in a blanket behind a doorway in the house at night before bedtime. I swear the sight was the darnest thing.
There was something about coming home to my house that gave me comfort, or a kind of "phew!" feeling after traveling back from a long vacation or being gone all throughout the day. For a long time, the walls in my bedroom were painted cherry red and I had a red and white duvet cover to match that my mother had sewn when I was little. On the walls hung art that Mom painted when she was a teenager and my white dressers and maple wood bed were hers when she was a kid. I remember the new wood floors that my daddy installed and the way that they creaked loudly when I would try to tiptoe into the living room on Christmas morning to peak at what Santa had brought me. As I got older, the color of my bedroom walls changed from red to yellow, yellow to lime green, and finally lime green to watermelon pink which is what they still are to this day. I loved pictures of any kind, from magazine ads and celebrity shoots to old pictures of the family and shots taken in Paris and London of my grandmother. My walls were covered with them from the ceiling to the base boards until a few years ago when Mom decided to take them all down and repaint again. Now, almost a twenty year old, I still come home to visit my hot pink room with bright yellow curtains and an eighties picture of Johnny Depp hanging on my old memo board.
As a kid, I loved to be alone. Because my house was practically in the middle of no where, this was not a difficult thing to do. When I was little I used to run away from my parents up in my tree house that Dad built me when we first moved in. It was complete with a pole and a yellow slide and a ladder leading down into a sand box where I hid all of my treasures that were usually found in the pond. I'd take a blanket and some candy from the candy jar and usually stay up there until I got tired or hungry or my German Shepherd would come and get me and bark til I came down. When I was probably 12 or 13 I started "running away" a little further down the street to the old cemetery on the corner of Schafer and Hinchey. I used to read the gravestones and sit under the huge oak tree and write poems or read chapter books there. I love that old cemetery and I cried the day that they cut my oak tree down because it was growing to far into the road. I still walk down there every once in a while to think and even pray.
In Michigan, there are 7 months of winter, 2 months of summer, a month of fall, and 2 months that I like to call the rainy season, also known as spring. Since my house was built on marsh, rain made the pond overflow and spill into the yard, causing the back yard to be a swamp until late July. Since before I can remember every birthday party I ever had was rained out. It rained like it snowed in Michigan. My friends and I used to put our bathing suits on and stand under the gutters on the front porch and wash each others hair with the water that collected on the roof during a thunderstorm after jumping in just about every puddle we could jump in on Hinchey road. I remember taking the old go-karts out on the dirt roads and sloshing through the mud all the way around the block until finally we were covered from head to toe in swamp water.
The older I became, the more I desired to leave that old farm house and never come back. I suppose most teenagers go through the same experience. I never ran too far away from home though, and I always came back. My teenage years on the farm seemed endless sometimes, but I wouldn't trade my memories for anything.
I remember getting ready for my very first date. I was sixteen years old with lipstick and red hair that hung to the middle of my back. I had spent all day looking into the mirror that once hung above my crib, perfecting the art of makeup. He was finally here, and I was finally ready. Tucker's green car pulled in the driveway and I could tell my daddy wasn't the least bit excited as I was. Tucker came to the transparent front door and I opened it, my hands shaking and sweaty. Of course, there was Dad, sitting at a bar stool just waiting and staring. Dad sat there then, and has always sat in the same stool, waiting for my dates to arrive.
So, in a nutshell, my house has become my home- I suppose it's not because Momma painted the walls a dozen times, and redecorated the basement, but because of my memories made there growing up. I'll miss that house dearly because I blew out the candles on my 5th birthday there, learned how to ride a bike in the driveway, got a sunburn on the back deck, took a shower under the gutters in the rain, lost my dog under my bed, and knelt beside my bed and became a Christian.
My memories will go on, and my house will stay put. Perhaps a little girl or boy will occupy my old room with the faded wooden floors, and the yardstick written in the closet on the wall. But wherever I am, whatever I do, the little yellow house with the big oak tree out back, and the address missing on the mailbox will always be my home.
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