I can remember my ten year old self watching it being built from the ground up and growing more and more excited as my Mom and Step-Dad pointed out where the kitchen, the living room and most importantly, my bedroom would be. I was apprehensive about moving into a new neighbourhood, in a new city where I would have to make friends all over again. Little did I know I would eventually meet people that would become life-long friends. We moved around a lot in my first ten years so it was hard for me to imagine staying in this house for an extended period of time. I certainly never imagined myself coming back to it over and over and eventually buying it, moving my daughter into it and starting a new life in it. I could not see that far into the future and assumed it would be just another notch on the belt of houses my parents had created for me.
From the moment we moved in, I was in love with the place. It was bright and open, our yard was huge and we had a balcony inside! I thought we were pretty damn fancy. I didn't know anybody that had a balcony inside their house. As it turns out, this is still my favourite feature, however, it's really just the dining room that overlooks the living room downstairs with a vaulted ceiling and two skylights. One year we had a huge Christmas tree in the corner of the living room that we could decorate from the upstairs dining area. I'll never forget putting the star on top by just simply leaning over the rail and plopping it on.
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| The indoor balcony...mind the mess, we're packing. |
This house has hosted many gatherings over the years. There have been birthdays, wakes, showers, family reunions...pretty much any excuse to have a party. My Mom and Step-Dad loved to entertain and that apple didn't fall too far from the tree. There is a bar in the basement made of solid oak with brass fixtures and built to look like the inside of a British pub. The piece de resistance is the old jail bars that my Step-Dad salvaged from the BC Penitentiary. My parents and their friends loved to dance so there was always good music and plenty of open floor space. When the weather was warm, the backyard was the gathering spot of choice. The grass was always green and trimmed to perfection and the bricks (the bricks that my cousin and I hauled in, one by one, on a very warm Saturday afternoon) that made up the patio were always sparkling clean. Weeds were not welcome anywhere in our yard. While I'll miss the space and beauty of our quarter acre lot, I will not miss the maintenance of it.
My home has seen my tears and laughter from tween to adult and my daughter's from newborn to teen. It watched her learn to ride her bike in the side yard and listened to me scream in agony over a bee sting on my eyelid. It's stairway carried my flailing body down into the living room on more than one occasion and it's walls know all of my dirty secrets. It has a few family pets buried in the backyard and the bodies of presents our cats have brought us over the years. It also holds a lot of love from all of the people that have entered it's doors over many, many years.
I sometimes think maybe we have built a museum here; a museum of happiness and memories. It is a combined collection for all us: my mother, my stepfather, my daughter, grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins, friends, pets and of course me. It is a collection of happy beads worn on multiple threads of reminiscence. Of course there are some sad beads too as life is made up of both. I'll never have another chance to come back to this museum that we've built but it will be forever in my mind and my heart and I will miss it dearly.
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