Short Stories

Roots

Walking into your childhood home is like eating a Chex-Mix snack bag. A lot of people would look inside and see all the good; the birthday's, dinner parties, sleepovers, and other family memories they cherish. Some people, however, only like parts of it, and forget that until they are already halfway through the bag. That is how I felt when I went to my childhood home for the first time in over nine years.

Walking up to that building felt like a fever dream. Seeing the place I once called home covered in debris, the roof caving in, mold visible on the exterior wall, and the grass so overgrown that I don't even want to know what was living inside it, gave me a sense of sadness I hadn't felt in a very long time; the sadness of a broken family. The gray exterior design did not help the ever-growing pain I had inside, and the evergreen color of the roof made the house feel sad, too.

I wasn't alone, that made the whole thing seem a little better. With my brother by my side, who was too young at the time to remember what had happened here, and my mom in front of me, we were going to take a trip down memory lane. One that I was slightly excited for, although I knew the nerves were there deep down. I was especially worried about my mom though, who I know remembers everything a lot better than I do, if her memories are not at all distorted.

The sign on the door scared me a little. Mentioning the place being condemned. That is never something you want to see on any place, let alone the home you spent the first six years of your life in (even less the place you were about to enter). I wasn't the first to go in, my mom was, and she instantly noticed the black mold smell. Now, it probably would have been smart to turn around at this point, especially with two children around, but we weren't planning on staying for long. Besides, I wanted to see my old room.

The first room of the house, which was the kitchen, brought back a flood of memories, good and bad. My first pet rabbit named Baba, whom I got when I was only two years old; keeping the shoes by the old wood stove in the winter to keep them warm; eating chicken pot pie with my brother and both of us despising the taste; those were just some of the many thoughts that ran through my mind. The old island with its ugly counter was still just as I had remembered, though I swear it was bigger than that.

The next room in the house was the living room, one of my favorite places in the house. I had good memories of playing Skylanders, and Call of Duty on my dad's Xbox 360. The Christmas tree that we used to put up, and the elf on the shelf that was hidden every year to keep my brother and I in check. I looked over to where the bathroom was, and although I never went inside, memories returned of getting scared of a leprechaun hiding in there. That memory still makes me laugh.

Now the stairs were pretty scary. I was nervous with how old they were that it was going to collapse under all of our weight, but they held surprisingly well. I had flashbacks to the time I fell down the stairs at a party 一 which was horrifying and hurt at the time but is fun to look back to now 一 and all of the times my mom told me I couldn't go up them alone. It was amazing when she took down the baby gate and I could traverse them without any help.

At the top I got a sense of uneasiness. This is the place I had wanted to be the whole time, basically rushing to get up here, why was I feeling this way now? I went into my room first, which didn't last long because that is where the roof was starting to collapse, and my mom didn't want us in there. We explored my brother's old room, which was still painted with a red-sox theme, and still had that awkward attic window I remembered. It was my parents' room that made me go cold.

All of the bad memories from my childhood came rushing back to me all at once. Waking up in the middle of the night to yelling. My parents rushing downstairs mid fight. My mom driving off in the middle of the night. Younger me distorted all of the memories, and I can only think about parts of it, but it still gives me chills to this day. Fortunately, we were just headed out. On our way down the stairs, though, I didn't think about falling, neither did I think about Skylanders in the living room, or the funky island in the kitchen. Walking out the door I looked back to the place I once called home, and was happy to never go there again.