Every Christmas we gathered in that tiny little house, unaware that it might be the last until it really was our last.
I recall the broken brick floor and the warm wooden walls. I remember the smell of the tiny bedrooms and vanishing into the short pantry for cokes.
I remember hanging those large stockings on the fireplace, and climbing over each other every year as we gathered to take pictures. It housed them when they were younger. It housed us when we all grew older. I remember coming around the corner to see grandpa reading his newspaper or glasses perched on his nose as he read a book. I remember the old fashioned pottery decorating the walls and I recalled the beat up old cooler that we lugged to every gathering. I remember the backyard as the mosquitoes ate us alive. I remember waving at the neighbors and feeding the dogs crackers for treats.
I remember sinking into that couch and nearly not being able to come out. I remember the day we sat on it, cold feet buried under each other as we tore open Christmas gifts and posed for four different cameras from around the room. I remember sitting around the table, craft glue stuck to our fingers. I remember yelling and jumping up to high-five the cousins when we won the board game. I remembered.
Now that will be someone else's story now that we are all gone. Now that will be what they remember every year at Christmas and in the Spring. Now some other family will have their children and then their grandchildren in there.
They won't remember us and how we laughed with each other. They won't remember us when we played bean bag toss outside and parked all up and down the road. They won't remember us.
But the house?
It will remember us as we brought our puppies inside to meet the family.
The house will remember that family that grew inside its very walls.
Then one day, it will remember the next family too. They might cry over that flowered wallpaper and too hot water faucet. They may not call the next room the computer room and store their barbies in the attic.
But that house will remember us.
