Childhood Home (Competition Entry)

Nervously I turn my car blinker on. It clicks repeatedly, reminding me to turn onto Aberford Drive. I was ten when my parents packed up our home and moved us from the neighborhood, city, and state that, in my mind, would always be my home.

 

As I made the right hand turn, the corner house on the left caught my attention. Lisa lived there, I remember running up and down the staircase that led to the second floor. Three houses down on my left my best friend Sharon lived. I flash back to a rainy August day spent singing “We are the World” on the backyard grass under our umbrella’s and raincoats. Directly across from her, PJ Powell, the only boy in a neighborhood of girls lived. How we loved playing with his black lab Gracie back then when leashes were not required. The street curves slightly to the left, visions of Kendra and Melanie playing hopscotch fill the now deserted driveway of their corner home.

 

My heart beats steadily; a feeling of calm tranquility creeps into my body. My lips curl up automatically in the excitement that soon I will be knocking on the door of my old childhood home, which for the past 24 years had lived only in pictures.

 

For the past few months, I flipped through old family photo albums that told the story of a thousand happy memories in the forgotten home. That is why I am here. Alone in the world, these pictures and warm memories of our time spent in this home are all I have to keep them alive. I drove 700 miles to be close to the parents who gave me life, and then left me alone to live it.

 

 

I turn the car, my eyes search for the brown picket fence surrounding the front courtyard. I look for the lush green lawn I remember learning cartwheels and playing tag on. I search for the house baring the number 1302. My heart sinks as none of these realities are found.

 

I stop in front of the third house on the right, the location of all my childhood memories. I slowly exit my car, in disbelief I search for an explanation. I re-count the houses. I check the street sign. I long for sign of neighborhood life that can explain why my beautiful picket fence was replaced with a chain linked Rent-a-Fence.

 

I tiptoe towards it, placing my fingers between the links of the cold uninviting metal. I shudder. Chills run down my spine, and my heart beats slightly faster. My childhood home is corrupted with a new reality that looks like the cover of the latest mystery novel.

 

The cement of the courtyard, which was home to a blue and green striped swingset and slide, is now cracked with untidy rubble recklessly abandoned. My old bedroom window, which was an imaginary ice cream stand on hot summer days, was broken. Glass shards sprout around an empty circle, the result of a ball or rock or some other unnatural disaster. The front door, once a deep blue that welcomed visitors with its proud beauty lay half-hinged and crocked. The paint had faded to a sullen grey, flaking and peeling from years of neglect.

 

Suddenly the memories of my childhood no longer make sense or belong in this place at all. I digress to a scared little girl. I ache to run through that once perfect door, to see my mother’s smile as she hands me a fresh baked cookie and asks for the playground gossip of first grade.

 

I step back, my eyes catching the large sign that I had missed upon my initial approach, “CONDEMNED – DO NOT ENTER.” A tear glides gently down my face, unwelcome.