HOME

This house was my home. When it was my home it looked different. It had a beautiful dogwood on the right side, a tall hedge along the back side, so from the road you couldn't see the back yard and it was always, always painted, clean and neat.

This is where my grandparents lived. This is where my mother and her siblings grew up and where I lived the first five years of my life. I spent almost every summer from age five to college in this house with my grandparents and any assorted cousin that was available. This is my house. 

I can tell you there are 13 steps straight up to the second floor that you see upon opening the front door. I can tell you that there is fireplace that I never saw used. I can tell you that the kitchen is so small that if the back door is open, you cannot open the oven door. My granddaddy built the large screened in porch on the side of the house and the carport. My grandmother planted and cared for a pomegranate tree in the back yard. There was a shed in the back yard that housed my granddaddy's collection of tools, fishing poles and other things and collections. The clothesline ran the entire length of the end of the back yard along the hedge. It was used almost every day. 

My grandmother loved birds and the bird feeder was in view of the porch and the bird bath was in view of the kitchen window.

I loved that house and the people in it more than anything else in my world. Every time I left I felt like I was being ripped away from my heart. 

I can still tell you where every piece of furniture was and what was in most of  the cabinets. 

This picture actually hurts my heart, because of the changes of the exterior that would've made my grandparents cringe. I can only imagine what the inside looks like. It is not my house anymore.

But in the words of Miranda Lambert, it is the house that built me.