The House That Built Me

This last weekend a good friend of mine from my childhood got married and invited me to her wedding. When she told me that she was going to get married on her grandfather's farm, I knew that I would have stop at another place while I was there. Her grandfather's farm was about 1/4 mile from my grandparent's house and where I grew up. I have a lot of great memories from playing with her at her family's farm.

 Since my parents moved up here close to us, I haven't driven home to see the house I grew up in for quite a few years. I think about it all the time. I love where I grew up. It was out in the country away from the city. My grandparents were right across the road. We had a HUGE yard and endless possibilities for play, and we would flood the lawn with canal water and play in it and have friends over. When I needed a place to go to be alone, all I needed to do was walk around the yard and it was always so peaceful. Someday, when school is over and we start really living, I want to live in an area like this.

As I was  driving to the wedding, I turned onto 125 W. and started heading towards my house. My heart even started pounding a little bit harder. I was seeing neighbors houses that I remembered, and even some new houses had cropped up here and there in what used to be fields. With every foot of road I got a little more excited...and then I saw what was the house I grew up in. The building itself looked the same, but the yard and surrounding trees were overgrown and not taken care of. Growing up, we always made sure the lawn was well kept and the trees were pruned, as well as the weeds. Whoever lives there now has done no such thing. There were also a few dump vehicles sitting out on the lawn, and what looked like a big train car sitting in front of the storage shed we had behind the house. The longer I sat and looked, the more my heart sank. The beautiful picture of my home I had in my mind when I was driving was being erased by the reality. I knew, in my heart, I would not be able to come back, at least not for a long time. Not if I knew it was going to look like this. The only good thing I could see about it was that whoever lives there is working on connecting the house and the storage shed together into one structure. This is something that was always my dad's dream to do. He even had the blue prints for making it all happen, but he set his dream aside for more important things.

This is a picture of the house I grew up in (from the road). My camera phone doesn't have a zoom, but you can see the overgrown foliage and you can see all of the dump vehicles and the train car. You can even see the partial structure connecting the house and the shed together.

I got back in my car and drove a few hundred feet to the top of a hill to look at my grandparent's house. Someone else has lived in that house since before my parents moved away, so I was somewhat prepared to see it. Just like my old house, everything is overgrown. The bushes that surround the yard are so tall and going every which way that they look ridiculous. They always looked perfectly round when I was younger. Whoever lives there now has turned the land my grandparents used as a garden into a dump heap. There are weeds growing everywhere and miscellaneous items spread all over the yard and areas around it. Before I left to take this trip down Memory Lane, I had planned to walk around my grandparent's farm and the house and take a good look over things. However, when I arrived, I was so sad in my heart that I didn't want to see any more than what I was looking at already. I guess, one of my weaknesses is getting too emotionally attached, and I definitely am emotionally attached to my house and my grandparent's house.

This was my grandparent's house. My grandpa built it with his own two hands. It used to be a quaint white and red. Now it's just a dull brown. When they lived there, the bushes were pruned and you could see the lawn from this angle and you didn't have to try to peer through the bushes. The farm is back behind the house and from where I was, it pretty much looked the same. I have a lot of great memories of playing in the barn, feeding cows, chasing cats, climbing fences...most everything that comes with farm life. I hope to one day live somewhere that my children will have a lot of space to play and explore like I did.

As I write this entry, and when I was driving last weekend, this song kept running through my mind. I really love this song and it holds a special place in my heart. It's called "The House That Built Me", and it's sung by Miranda Lambert:

I know they say you can't go home againI just had to come back one last timeMa'am, I know you don't know me from AdamBut these hand prints on the front steps are mine

Up those stairs in that little back bedroomIs where I did my homework and I learned to play guitarAnd I bet you didn't know under that live oakMy favorite dog is buried in the yard

I thought if I could touch this place or feel itThis brokenness inside me might start healingOut here it's like I'm someone elseI thought that maybe I could find myself

If I could just come in, I swear I'll leaveWon't take nothing but a memoryFrom the house that built me

I really think this trip was good for me. It brought me back down to reality, and it severed the really strong emotional attachment I have to my house and where I grew up, at least a little bit. For years after I graduated high school I promised myself that I would come back and buy my parent's house, or buy my grandparent's house, or buy a house next door and raise my children in the same place I grew up, but now I know that, realistically, that probably won't happen. And really, now that I think about it, I want my children to have a home that they can call their own, and not a place that mommy grew up in and knows everything about. These two homes will always be a good place to visit. Maybe one day when my children are older I can take them there and say, "This is where mommy grew up", but for now, I really want to make memories in the home we have. Yes, we only live in a small apartment right now, but "home is where the heart is" and I've never felt closer to that statement than I do right now. I have felt for the last 7 years that I left my heart in Rupert, but I know now that my heart always been where it should be, with my husband and children. And as long as we are together, we can make a home anywhere, out of anything.