yesterday's home

[author's note: sorry for not keeping up with the whole "paragraph per day" goal. I've been really tired.]

I was surrounded by butter cream colored walls and mounds of my sister's school supplies. There was truly nothing left of myself in my parents' house.

We moved here when I was nine, far out from the city, nine tenths of a mile north of Dupont Road, the country highway that wound its way through the sleepy hamlets of Cedarville and Leo. There was a small subdivision near us, and a country gas station that probably looked the same as it did in the 1930s.

Our home was on a sizeable spread of acreage with a shock of pine trees separating our main home area from the flood plain of the creek that had no name, but was major enough to be a direct tributary of the Saint Joseph River.

My parents had the house custom built. It was designed to resemble our old home in the Brookside Park subdivision, but this time with a front-facing attached garage, and larger, more spacious bedrooms and living areas.

The home had many improvements, such as a screened-in porch, and two decks that added plenty of outdoor living space. The biggest improvement was an in-ground swimming pool. I used to love swimming in it. I was typically the first person in the pool every year, no matter if the weather was 60 degrees outside, I was in the frigid water as soon as I got home from school.

But that was all years ago. Twenty one years had passed since we moved into the house. I had since moved out, moved back in, and moved out again. This time, I was in my bedroom looking for something, but I don't remember what it was. I was house sitting for my parents while they were on vacation in Tennessee. I barely swim there anymore.

"Butter cream walls," I thought to myself. "They do not go with the burnt sienna carpet." I never would have picked this color.

I live in the same city as my parents, but I'm deep within the limits of the city, in an historic neighborhood that has tall trees that triumph over early twentieth century houses. My own home is over a hundred years old.

I call it my home because to me, it really is. I've been living here for six years now, and though I've put thousands of dollars into it, it has kind of a hold over me, and I can't quite bring myself to leave it. The modest mortgage also helps. I can't rent a two-bedroom apartment for what I'm paying for the 1,400 square foot three-bedroom house.

I make the thirteen plus mile trip to my parents' house every week or two to catch up with the rest of the family and to check to see if it ever feels like home. It never does. I think it's because of the butter cream walls.