Saturday, April 24, 2010

The House on Titchner Road



Please don't buy this house. It's up for sale right now and I'm feeling very crumby about the whole thing. This house is the last physical remaining thread of my childhood and if you buy this house on this perfect tiny plot of land in Vermont, then part of me will disappear behind a veil of memories that I will never be able to come back to visit.

Please don't buy this house. The unfinished basement will mean nothing to you, but the musty smell that floated into my nose the minute you opened the basement door was a smell that I loved and as a child I would open the door, stick my head inside and pretend to eat the air for a moment and then shut the door and keep on walking.

As well, your grandmother did not skate around on roller skates with hot pink wheels while Janet Jackson sang Rhythm Nation in the background in this basement. But mine did.

I remember the first time I got my period was in this house, in the bathroom here on Thanksgiving. I made my whole family late for dinner and I was humiliated about the whole incident.

Please don't buy this house. If egg shells grew like flowers then there would be a field of eggs growing down the hill because of all the eggs we would throw at the trees for fun.

As kids, we used to sleep in the closets too. Not because my parents were cruel but because the closets are huge and perfect for hiding in with flashlights and sleeping bags and little children in their pajamas.

And before we had the chance to buy sleds, we would go sledding down the hill on garbage bags in the snow. There was also a tee-pee fort that was built out of broken trees in the forest behind our house. We pretended that the Indians of the Vermont Woods from long ago abandoned that fort and it was left for us to explore and rebuild.

It was here where my mother would catch toads and salamanders in the summer and let us hold them in our hands. It was here where we would take the dog down to the lake at the end of the day to watch her go swimming and catch frogs.

On summer nights, the sky was so clear and dark and silent and we would lie out on beach towels and watch all the shooting stars and stare in wonder up at the sky.

This is the place were I learned how to play a mean game of badminton, drive a car, paint rocks and realize that family entertainment was us entertaining each other, rather than going to an amusement park to be entertained.

So I'm just going to ask you one more time, please don't buy this house. It will welcome you with open arms. It will teach you how to be quiet. It will teach you that paying attention to one another is more important than paying attention to the television. It will teach you to slow down, because there is not a whole lot else to do except enjoy the company of the loved ones you came with and the quiet beauty of the woods around you.

Don't buy this house. Unless of course, you really want to.

2 comments:

Life in Him said...

i love this colleen

Carol said...

you made me want to cry! I wish I could fulfill your dream, but alas....life moves on