I was glad that the house hadn’t changed. So much in the town had disappeared. Farms, fields, entire streets – all razed and replaced to make life easier and faster for the people who still lived here.
I’d moved away. Not by choice, I’d loved this house – it looked like one of those that had a magic wardrobe or a secret room under the staircase. I’d never found one. I’d never seen a ghost either, but I was still looking when my father announced that he was taking a job in another state. It wasn’t our first move – by the time I was in high school, we’ve lived in eight different neighborhoods – but this time was the first that made me go to my room and pound the pillows and fight back tears.
As I looked at the house now, I remembered how awful I felt seeing it disappear from the back of my mom’s van. My mom had sensed how I felt and stopped at the Dairy Queen to get me a cone. As I’d eaten it, she’d told me how I would make lots of new friends at my new school and about how sixth grade was going to be so much fun. She didn’t know that my quiet tears were all about the house. Friends pretty much were the same from town to town, and schools all were pretty much alike. Different faces, different names, but they all felt the same to me. This house, though, was different. I felt something here. Something that nagged and gnawed at me over the years and made me seek it out now that I didn’t have to follow my parents across the country.
I was here now, and the house was the same. It didn’t seem smaller or older or any of the things that had annoyed me about the rest of the town as I’d driven through. It was exactly the same, and it made me feel exactly the same as it had ten years ago.
I was home.
I’d moved away. Not by choice, I’d loved this house – it looked like one of those that had a magic wardrobe or a secret room under the staircase. I’d never found one. I’d never seen a ghost either, but I was still looking when my father announced that he was taking a job in another state. It wasn’t our first move – by the time I was in high school, we’ve lived in eight different neighborhoods – but this time was the first that made me go to my room and pound the pillows and fight back tears.
As I looked at the house now, I remembered how awful I felt seeing it disappear from the back of my mom’s van. My mom had sensed how I felt and stopped at the Dairy Queen to get me a cone. As I’d eaten it, she’d told me how I would make lots of new friends at my new school and about how sixth grade was going to be so much fun. She didn’t know that my quiet tears were all about the house. Friends pretty much were the same from town to town, and schools all were pretty much alike. Different faces, different names, but they all felt the same to me. This house, though, was different. I felt something here. Something that nagged and gnawed at me over the years and made me seek it out now that I didn’t have to follow my parents across the country.
I was here now, and the house was the same. It didn’t seem smaller or older or any of the things that had annoyed me about the rest of the town as I’d driven through. It was exactly the same, and it made me feel exactly the same as it had ten years ago.
I was home.
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