2010, My Mother's House

"If this old house was built on memories, it would last 1000 years." This is the first line of a song I once heard.

On a recent plane trip home from Wichita, Kansas, I couldn't help but think back to the house where I grew up. My mother, father and I moved to the brand new house in the brand new sub-division when I was four years old. The year was 1950. Old home movies and photos show little stick trees that, more than sixty years later, canopy the street. My sister and brother were born and we shared our home with dogs, birds, a rabbit and even an alligator named Pete. (That is another story.)

There were many children in the neighborhood. We played outside every day in the summer, running through sprinklers, riding bikes and playing games such as Mother May I and jump rope. We put on shows for our parents, little skits and dances. At night, the adults would pull up lawn chairs and talk while the children would lie on blankets and look up at the stars. TV was new and we watched our share of "My Little Margie," "Flash Gordon," and "Our Hit Parade," but in the summer everyone stayed outside cooking on grills and watching children play. Neighbors knew neighbors back then.

A few days before, my siblings and I left our childhood home for the last time. Our beloved mother died last September and we just moved our step-father into an independent living retirement community. After three days of packing up the family crystal, china, pictures and antiques we wanted to keep in the family, we turned the house over to an estate sale company and realtor.

In those last few days, we didn't call it "Mother's house" or "home" anymore. We called it by the house number, 2010. I think it help to distance us from the place where we grew up. As we locked the door and left the house for the last time, we bid farewell and took our memories with us.