Posted on by Julie Deziel

Home Is Where The Heart Is

How many times have you answered the question, “What is your address?” Or have you typed it in on a form to have something shipped to you or filled it in on your human resource paperwork? This is your place, your landing spot, your place of comfort mixed in with a little chaos. This is home. Most people can say they have lived in at least two places in their life. One would be where they grew up and then the home they lived in as an adult. Some can say they have experienced many places across the world as home. Have you ever wanted to go back to that one place that you first called home, to relive those memories.

My first “home” memory is a two-story white house with a front porch and two detached garages. It had a big yard and we played with the neighborhood kids every day. I shared a bedroom across from my parent’s bedroom. There was a big old piano in the dining room that I took many years of piano lessons on. We always sat around the large dining room table after Sunday church and had chicken. I have often driven past it and wondered how much has changed since we moved out in 1977. I would love to take a walk through it and remember the back door slamming and stand at the bedroom window and look over the back yard and remember the laughter playing “Annie-Annie-Over” and “Kiss or Kill.”

Not every home has only good memories though for whatever reason. Taking a walk through a home once lived can flood a person with so many feelings. As you run your hand along the bannister you might ignite the feeling of a first love as you readied for prom. Maybe seeing your name in concrete reminds you of the demise of your parent’s marriage and how that laid groundwork for feelings of abandonment as you grew up. Would the owners of that house now allow you in even if you promised you’d leave? That you promised you would not take anything but the memories that you found along the way.

When we moved from the place I first called home to the second place I called home before I moved as an adult was a large three-story home on a little lake way off the road. Good memories were made there and sad memories sprinkled in along the way. Nearly 30 years after I left home I was able to call it home again with my husband as we had the opportunity to purchase it. It is still a large old three-story home that we have made our own and we have made our own memories but I am blessed to be able to reminisce with my old memories.

I have learned though from my first home to my hopefully last home it was not the lumber, the paint, how many bedrooms or what neighborhood it stood in but more of who was inside; who made those memories. It was the heart of the place that made it home; the laughter, the family. Each of those memories had a part of building who I am. When I leave our home for the last time as Miranda Lambert sings in her song, “The House That Built Me,” I “won’t take nothin’ but a memory from the house that built me.”

https://youtu.be/DQYNM6SjD_o

Posted on by Julie Deziel · 1 Comment

Empty

This is one part of our yard; the east side of the driveway. Imagine it full of trees and overgrowth of trees and cattails near the water. Last summer and this summer my husband and a kind old man spent countless hours cutting down and hauling out the trees to bring the vision that my husband had for a clear view from the house to the lake. This is the nearly end product minus grass (next year’s project). This space at one time had a log cabin, a chicken coop with a concrete foundation and a small 1-car garage. You see no remnants. Imagine next summer this will be all green and absolutely breath-taking view out towards the lake.

For me though having grown up out here and watching them clear all the trees and weeds I watched them empty bits and pieces of my childhood life and small aspects of my parents slowly slipped away. I have told my husband, “You are tearing down my memories.” But I knew better. The memories will always be there but visually they are erased.

Having lost four family members in a years time the same principle is being played out here. They were taken away, erased away from Alzheimer’s, kidney disease, sudden medical illness and an undiagnosed cardiac condition for my 32-year-old son-in-law. Their physical presence has sadly been wiped away and so incredibly hard to face at times that it can be hard to breathe. We just cannot catch our breath being in a state of grief for so long.

Just as the land east of the driveway changed completely with my husband’s vision, my memories of playing there or jumping off the dock in the lake have not faded. So too are the memories of my loved ones who have moved on in their journey. I just have to allow myself the grace of time to take those breaths and know that as the canvas of life changes what I carry in my bank of memories will never change. My loved ones walk with me and those I love. As I will walk across the green grass next summer I will hear the laughter of a childhood many years ago as we played football in the dark with the neighbors and the sound of the wood splitter as dad prepared the wood piles for winter or the vision of my mother sitting in her lawn chair twirling her hair as she read one of many books. I will remember the crisp morning we stood as a family for the photographer and a picture from that morning sits below a lamp with a red bulb lit for my son-in-law. My view when I close my eyes is filled with images from the past that can never be wiped away with a chainsaw or a tractor. Next year as I walk across the green grass I will hear it all, I will remember it all and I will make new memories with the new view. My memory bank is not erased nor will it ever be empty and will embrace each of those memories and breath, reflect, and smile. The view is full.

Posted on by Julie Deziel

In The Hood

It is chilly outside this morning. There still remains some of the snow even after a warmer day yesterday. It is still a little over a week until Thanksgiving so it is expected that more snow will fall this season and snowbanks will envelope the sides of the road. Any leaves that are hanging on will surely give up in the wind and roll across the snow filled yards where green grass was present just a week ago. How quickly this street changed. This is the street I grew up on and standing out there brought back many memories that brought a smile to my face. Was it just yesterday that:

My grandparents bought us new bikes for Christmas and mine had sissy bars and a white basket and I loved it.

We were only allowed to ride our bikes around one block. Did our parents truly think we would follow that rule?

We walked from our Carmen Addition home to the Woods Addition for piano lessons and never thought twice about being snatched up by a “bad” person.

We would go to the outdoor pool downtown almost every day and stay all day and swim. No parents, just us kids enjoying our summer weekdays with our friends.

We were playing “Annie, Annie Over” at our garage or “Kiss or Kill” with neighborhood kids.

Where we rushed everyday to the warming house to get our skates on and skating and hanging out long after the street lights came on.

Kids were running in and out of each other’s houses getting permission to go here or there.

We thought we were rich receiving an allowance of .25 each Saturday and rushing to Sadie’s grocery store a block and a half down to get a little brown bag full of candy.

The streets were full of kids on their bikes and the yards were just as full of kids playing football or hide and seek. A car passing by certainly had to look extra hard to ensure there was not a child running nearby. Street hockey players ruled over traffic. There was a constant sound of laughter and slamming back doors of kids running out of them.

The street is quiet today. I heard the wind blow and a car drove by at a good clip; no child to watch out for. No sleds or leftover bikes from the last ride. Sadie’s is gone and no warming house or ice rink. Just as I grew up and my life changed for me, it did the same in the old neighborhood. How I wish the nice warm weather could stay and the beauty of summer and the laughter of the children in the yards, swimming pools, ice rinks, and in the streets could be heard from morning to nightfall.

The house on 4th Avenue S has changed, I have grown older, the neighborhood is not the same, nor am I. In my mind though the memories remain clear and bring such joy to my heart.

Life in the hood…oh to be young again just for a day!