Time Will Tell

I sat at my kitchen table in Oakdale, Minnesota. The table was an off white oval with unreliable chairs. The lights above it were on its last days of power and my Grandma Nanny sat beside me with her 94 year old eyes staring in front of her in silence. My mom and dad made their way from my siblings’ rooms after putting them to bed. “I want to give you 10,000 dollars to move out of this old house,” demanded my grandma Nanny. How random was her act of kindness, or did she hate the house? She never said anything to my parents, but the house leaked and the basement smelled like burnt cat because my dad accidentally dried the cat with the clothes last month. It lived and so did the smell.

We found a teal sided, five bedroom house in Wisconsin. It was set deep in the woods with a creek no more and 3 acres from our front door. After my family had settled in I started to realize how a person like me falls in love with a building, but hate it just the same. There was a 48 degree incline up to our garage that we climbed every time we came home. In the winter we took turns sledding down on cardboard sheets and plastic cookware. As the house and I grew older I started painting the great city of Rome in my bathroom, but I went to college before I could finish.

I had never shared my space with anyone before coming to college and when I got to my dorm I found myself rooming with two other girls my age. I will always miss my teal sided house. Semesters went by and before I knew it my family had decided to give up my teal house. With sadness I parted waiting for my own teal house.