I’ve lived in several houses, but one of the houses that I lived in will always be the most memorable. We lived in a small house in Marietta, on Oswalt road for about 4-5 years. What brought this memory back to me was a dream that I had last week. That one little memory brought about a million with it.
My first little brother was an infant when we moved in there and that’s where I really started learning about child care. That’s where I learned how much I loved kids. My parents added onto the house and it was much bigger. We expanded our house and expanded the family, also; I was blessed with another baby brother. That house is where I lived when my parents got divorced, its where I lived when my mom was deployed to Afghanistan, its where I lived when my closest friend died in a car wreck, and its where I lived when my father started dating again. (Which, any child of divorce will understand, is a difficult thing to get used to.) All within those short years, I was given a lot to deal with before we moved out of that house and into my fathers girlfriends house. Then, my mother finally came back from Afghanistan and I immediately moved back in with her, full time. We moved 2 hours away to the Fort Sill area and stayed there a good long while until we eventually came back to Lone Grove. Through all that time that I was away from my home town, I swore up and down that I hated that house (the Oswalt house, as we call it) because I hated each and every memory that came to me when I saw it.
Looking back now, I can see how childish I was being, because it was really my fault for only seeing the hard times when I remembered that house. So, I up and decided to go visit the house one evening. I drove all the way out there and ended up chickening out. I went to see a friend, we talked about it, then I told myself the next day, I’d do it. It was time to bury some demons, and I did. the new owner let me look at the house. I remembered the boys as babies, I remembered playing in the backyard with my big brother, I remembered birthday parties and Christmas and all the things that ever made me smile in that house. Its good to face your past sometimes, and I’m glad that I did.
