Our house is old-- almost 100 years old to be exact. It has these weathered wood floors and a hand-tiled fire place from the 1920's and stucco on the walls which has long since covered and re-covered the cracks on those worn walls over the years. And sometimes I sit and wonder about just who called this house THEIR home in the years before.
When I was growing up in Sharon, Massachusetts my sister and I used to wonder the same thing. Long before my mom and dad bought our little red house, before I was even born, the kids who used to live in that same house had written their names in chalk on the underside of the basement stairs. As little kids, my sister and I saw the names on the underside of the stairs and always wondered just who those kids were. It was the only house I knew for the first 20 years of my life, and my family had made its own set of memories there, but clearly this house held special meaning for others as well.
One day when I was out mowing the lawn, a car pulled up and a couple of folks got out. They told me they used to live in the little red house too. They knew about the names under the stairs. They were in the neighborhood and stopped for a second, just a brief second, to relive the happy times they too had in that little red house.
Fast forward to today.
It's Sunday morning in the Dadmissions house in South Pasadena, California. My 7 year old is playing a new piece on the piano she is learning. My 5 year old is jumping up and down in the living room trying to catch a ray of sunshine coming in through the front door. Breakfast is cooking in the kitchen- the smell of bacon, eggs, and potatoes fills this small, postage-stamp sized house. And after four years here, there's no question this house is beginning to feel like home.
One day years from now, people living here might wonder about the folks who lived in the Dadmissions house. They'll probably find the closet where we've been etching the girls' height each year as they get older... They'll probably wonder about the two little girls who made their childhood here. And one day, years from now, I picture these two girls as strong, independent, young women, pulling the car over, getting out of the car, and remembering the memories they made here as well, even for a brief second. New memories can be made every day.
It's never too late to make them.
