Colorful
trees decorate your way to the house. The leaves on the ground dress the roads
welcoming you to taste the pleasure of a fantastic story. Almost at the end of
the road, on the left side, you can see the house, charming like a kid’s
smile.
A green garden invites you to an adventure: the journey in the house of
dreams. Wooden windows and doors are surrounded by bricks, and red and white
flowers. From the balcony, yellow, red, white and orange flowers fall like an
exotic waterfall covering the garage entrance.
In front of the main door, there
is a hand-made carpet that captures some of the effort, love and work that was
put into every corner of the house.
Recently,
my family moved out of the place where we used to live, the place where I spent
most of my childhood, the place that keeps all my secrets.
The walls that belong
to this house saw me growing up, crying and laughing in all the different
situations in my life: my birthday parties, the first time I found out that
Santa Claus didn’t exist, and the moment my mom told me she was finally
divorcing my dad after a short period of “hopes” (for getting back together
after their first separation).
Even though the house still belongs to us, there are other people living there,
strangers, that I didn’t want to meet and I still refuse to. I saw them once
from a distance, like shadows in the night, like ghosts of my imagination.
Although
I believe that my memories are one of my most valuable treasures, I was
devastated when I had to pack all my personal things and leave my room, my
walls, and my home.
I still talk about them as if they were my room, my walls
and my home. The warmth of the room was so peaceful that you felt like someone
was hugging you every time you walked into it.
The pastel walls matched
perfectly with the light that was coming from outside the huge window, creating
a new sunset every moment during the day. The curtains were pastel pink, like
rosebuds decorating my windows. Going back for Christmas this year, I didn’t
have my home.
I didn’t hear the same noises of birds singing in the morning,
or neighbors cutting the grass (it’s amazing, but that was the only place
where the noise of the mower didn’t bother me). I didn’t smell the same
fragrances of rain when it was coming, or eucalyptus when we turned on the
fireplace.
When I went home this time, I didn’t have my walls, my balcony and
my flowers (which I believed I was the only one able to take care of).
Obviously, I was wrong because the flowers were still there.
Has
the house ever been alive? What a weird idea I have sometimes, even though I
know my family gave it life by our actions. I even got the feeling the house
could talk to me, calm me down when I was sad, or simply smile when I was happy.
No matter how, I’m still convinced that we shouldn’t be sad; because we
still have our memories, and will never be able to give them away.
The
house is the huge box that holds my childhood memories, the memories that I love
the most. That’s probably the reason why I miss home, that home, the one
attached to all my beautiful memories.
I lived a simple childhood. The house was
always full of friends that came to do homework, study or simply have tea. It
gave you a nice feeling to get inside it and find yourself surrounded by wooden
furniture and ceilings, books and pictures.
Some of my friends still remember
how nice it used to smell as soon as you would get inside it. It was a wood
smell like a forest, fresh and clean air, like our lives. I remember asking them
what kind of smell, and they would tell me: “it just smells like your
house.”
Obviously, I was used to it already. I kept guessing what the smell
was, playing an innocent game with my mind. Was it good? Was it new? One day one
of my friends asked me what the smell in my clothes was. I was surprised when he
said it was just like my house smelled.
Then I realized, it smelled like roses,
combined with wood, lots of wood. We had roses in the garden, and I loved to
bring them inside. We had wood in a basket beside the fireplace and eucalyptus
over the stove.
Another
reason that put me so close to my house is the fact that it grew up with us, and
it was affected by each happy and sad moment we lived in our lives.
When my
parents first moved in, it wasn’t finished, but they had all the energy to
make it grow, to fill each of its spaces. Little by little it was getting ready.
All of a sudden, after seven years of continued accomplishments both in the
house and the family, we were paralyzed, like everything else in our lives: my
parents were getting divorced. That’s when the house started growing
exclusively with my sister and me.
The older we became, the more we could take
care of it. It was as if the house was suffering with us, and the more we
recovered, the more life it regained. On the bad days, the house looked
disorganized, unattended; the happy days, it looked bright and impeccable.
We
weren’t happy to leave the house, but after a few years of being only three of
us living between its warm arms, we realized we weren’t living the way we were
meant to live.
My mom had moved out. Even though we were asked which of my
parents we wanted to live with, the answer was very obvious: we were living with
my dad. We have always preferred him.
After some time of living there, we
realized that that was the house for the four of us (Mom, Dad, my sister and
me), and unfortunately we weren’t going to live like that anymore. After long
talks, we decided that the house was going to be rented out. It was a big step,
but we still had to leave it, unoccupied every single space of it.
Finally,
the day came to leave the house. Everyone cried, even my neighbors, even the
maid. I understand why it was so sad: we had to pack all our stuff and with it,
we took our memories.
The deeper we got into the closets, the older were the
memories we found. I remember finding my school reports, the ones that made me
so nervous at that time in my life. I was almost sure I was going to get the
best grades, but the pressure it put over me wouldn’t let me sleep the night
before.
I found the boxes where we kept all our decorations for birthday
parties. We had gotten them from my godparents, who were in that business. We
used the same stuff for every party; it was like a tradition already: the
decorations were getting older, but it looked more beautiful with age.
Today,
we live in another place, far from that home, from that neighborhood. My parents
don’t go there, unless they need to check on how the other people are taking
care of it.
Today I know why leaving the house was so hard for us: we had to
assume that life had passed and with it our childhoods were left behind, and our
parents’ memories were covered with dust.
