I am a house painted blue and white, the colors that mom loves most. Dad wanted green, but mom fought her case and held her ground, banter rich with conviction. I am her childhood by the ocean and I am her husband’s eyes. I am aquamarine hues of love and warmth and everything she holds dear in the world. On 30th AVE SE, Olympia, Washington, I am respite on a bad day at work.
I am a house with faucets and cabinets that dad fixed with his own hands. Mom got annoyed and slightly skeptical about the whole ordeal and told her husband “I think we should call the plumber” twice. My efficient pipes and hinges are dad’s pride and satisfaction with good work, and the love he has for helping his wife and children.
I am a house with floors mopped clean, formerly stained with paints, and applesauces, and juices. Mom and dad’s second child, their rambunctious, lively son, is responsible for half of them. Cereal, milk, and school projects. Memories of failed food on spoons acting as airplanes, hours of making a baking soda volcano turned into an unforeseen eruption. My floors are theirs for the staining, and theirs for the loving.
I am the house where mom found out she was pregnant with her first daughter. Mom realized she could touch and hold a sweet little creature in her arms, and rock it to sleep. Mom saw her first daughter’s small toes touch the Earth for the first time, walking off to her adulthood. I felt the three warm bodies huddle close together at night. I felt the look of annoyance and love that dad gave mom when mom passed him the dirty diapers to throw away.
I am the house where dad had to give his daughter away to a boy at the front door, holding flowers in his hand. My front door holds the trembling knocks of boys on their first dates, and my foyer holds the memories of nervous small talk and teenagers blushing.
I am a house with cabinets and drawers full of memories and echoes of life in the past. I am full of old CD’s, and old books with annotations, and I am full of moments in time when someone was happy. I am full of unabashed love and stolen moments from kids that mom and dad had when they danced to their song on the radio. I witnessed their second daughter, writing notes to her friends in her copy of Emma.
I am a home. A home painted blue, a home mopped clean, a home full of cluttered drawers. Yet, I am home for the intangible. The place where anger, love, nervousness, and happiness flows unfettered, like a river.
I am home for feelings, those which can never be expressed to the outside world. I am home to valleys and mountains of emotion; through job loss, graduation, and breakups.
I am a place where you can unabashedly feel.