Shady Lane

Finally, after almost a year and a half on the market, my house has sold. Well, not my house, my parent's house, but it's hard for me to not claim it as my own. There are so many memories there. Thinking about it now, my mind goes through that cheesy flashback thing they do in the movies: laughing in the backyard playing hide and go seek or acting out some crazy storyline we came up with on the fly, whether it was sailing off to Europe in our sky fort or swimming as mermaids in the pool; Hovering over the computer in the living room, surrounded by friends and flirting with guys in chat rooms when AOL was brand new and you were super cool if you had a scanner to download your seventh-grade picture; mom in kitchen, taking a break from her "studio" to make Jess and I an after-school snack. We still rave about the "macho nachos" and her other creations when food was a little scarce; My Grandpa sitting at the kitchen table every day with a cup of coffee and a cookie to split with the dog; Playing HORSE and Around the World with my dad in the driveway; The parties: Christmas Eve, Halloween, Easter, birthdays, you name it. Always filled with lots of family, friends and food. This is a long flashback. And it deserves to be longer, but not here. The point is, the house is sold, and it's tough for me to imagine someone else -- a couple, maybe a family eventually -- filling it with their own laughter, their own parties, adding their own damage to that chip in the kitchen floor. It's not that big of a house, and I don't know how anyone else's memories can fit in with the ones I already keep there.