Homesick

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I can't believe how this picture makes me feel. I'm surprised.

I have been so happy to live in Houston. No mountains, no small town culture for me. But for some reason I can't readily identify, this street view picture of my first childhood house makes me homesick. I had forgotten about it. I felt that it didn't exist any longer since it wasn't a part of my life. I figured it would be raggedy and falling down if it were even still standing. I was shocked the other night when I obviously had too much time on my hands and looked it up on Google maps.

It sounds silly but I experienced some resentment that it was looking so good without my family there to take care of it. How could anyone else be living there? It just didn't seem right. For the first time I can remember, I felt like claiming my history there.

To tell the truth, I never missed the house after we moved to Texas to a split floorplan house with "my own private room." Actually, the Virginia house had been kind of spooky for me. It presented so many challenges for a child as anxious as I was. The back yard literally dropped off a few feet past my swingset. Far "down the bank" was the city of Salem or Roanoke, I don't know which. Regardless, no place that a child would want to slip and fall into. The cold damp basement had one lightbulb in the front and one in the back, both requiring a blind sprint through darkness to the center of the room to feel for the worn twine to pull to turn it on. There were too many granddaddy long legs. And there was the man I swear I saw in the basement going through our things (probably a nosy landlord) and the devil that stood in his red cape out by the clothesline many nights when I looked out my window just before dark. I hated that window by the foot of my bed. And I thought the world must be full of trouble since we were located down the road from the fire station with all its sirens.

So for all these years, since I left at the age of seven, I haven't exactly had fond memories of the place. And I'm not saying that I suddenly have a whole host of them. But when I saw the dogwood tree in the front yard the homesick feeling slammed through me. It's still there. The shade is still there. I remembered BELONGING there. Me and all my dolls and my barbies and my baby sister. We ran through the thick grass with bare feet, often getting stung by a bee. I sat for hours in the clover patches looking for the "four leaf's." I looked up at the telephone poles and hoped there would be a problem so I could watch the men climb it again. I imagined what it would feel like to climb them myself. I watched with wonder that the birds sat still on their wires when the fire trucks flew by. We ate popsicles on the porch so the neighbor kids wouldn't see and wish that they had one if they weren't as lucky as us. All these little memories made me willing to reconnect, willing to say it was my home.

I don't think I will likely choose to go back there, but seeing how it looks now has been a sort of a gift. Instead of working to maintain a safe distance between now and the past, I have a reason to feel good about claiming it. It is so easy to remember the negative things about the past. I don't know why it is so difficult to remember the "dogwood trees." I am thankful that I could virtually go back and reframe my memories of 910 Red Lane.

I hope they take good care of that tree.