House. That’s all I’ve ever called you.

Buttercup was never long on imagination.

Patchwork white and crumbling shingles
Beside newer white siding
Keeping out the rain
Periodically interrupted
By a plethora of windows
Letting in the light

Uneven white paint on old, old walls
Sun through wide kitchen windows
Barn roof shingles on the grass after wind
Cobwebs in living room corners
Textured blue plastic porch floor
Expanse of deck, with a barbecue smell
On the warm, windy days.

French glass doors covered in
Smudges of dog nose prints
Only one door ever opens
Except at Christmas
When we bring in the tree.

Heavy iron pellet stove
Chipped red painted floor
Adjacent scratched cherry floorboards
Peeling white painted door frames
Mismatched light fixtures
(especially the round one in the middle of the ceiling that the youngest daughter unabashedly refers to as the ceiling titty)
Threadbare grey love seat, and crocheted blankets, for naps
Television, in the evenings
Doctor Who, Marvel
Shrek, The Matrix,
Scrooge, It’s A Wonderful Life.

Piano that nobody knows how to play
Globe on top of one bookshelf
(the one with the sliding glass door)
Old clock on the armoir with the blankets And the dusty games, the wooden chess set
With the green velvet lining
Losing horribly to cousins
Every time.

Dark, wood grainy kitchen cupboards
With the mismatched set of dishes
Thick white plates with pink rose pattern
Around the edges
Thick white counter top
Coffee maker, toaster, clutter, sink
With two taps, one with softer water
A small black handle, older than me.
Stainless steel pots in the corner cuppboard
The one with the hinged door that bends
My older sister crawled inside once
In the very beginning
Cranked linoleum kitchen floor
That sags in the middle
And looks like woven white and brown square tiles, arranged in a simple pattern
That repeats, over and over again

White Christmas lights over the windows
The BOSE radio on top of the microwave
The stack of CD’s
Listening to Live From Here
Coloring at the kitchen table
Baking cookies and cutting them out
Doing math homework
Prisms and knickknacks by the windows
Casting rainbows on the floor and walls
When there is bright sun in the morning

The door to the creepy stone basement with the cobwebs and the untrustworthy stairs
The door to the pantry
The mudroom
The room with the sink
And the room where the cats sleep
And the room to the rest of the house.

The steep wooden stairwell
We keep the door closed because of the cats.
Painted insane pink, because my mother
Let five year old me choose the color
The plaster lump in the stairway wall
That looks like a monster lives inside
Breathing slowly

Uneven wooden floorboards, rickety railing

The little hallway with four doors
Attic, bathroom, bedroom, bedroom.
You have to cross a narrow bridge
Over the stairs
To get into the attic

God, the attic
Where I have been sleeping
Since I was thirteen
Since I needed a space of my very own.
The attic
Filled with three generations
Mother, grandmother, and great grandmother
Doilies, Christmas tree ornaments
Soapstone, old cloth
Dusty telescope
Old trunks full of tiny dress up clothes
Stuffed animals
Old diaries
Children’s books
Carefully preserved
Two windows
And the terrible ugly vanity
Inherited from somewhere
With drawers full of my candles
And small tangible things
I hang on to, to remember
Like the paper with the first calculus problem that I ever asked for help with in college.

Downstairs, again
The wooden statue of a heron
With its head high and its wings folded
By the windows
The rickety table
Doing homework
Under the roof
In the shade of the big pine tree
Strumming guitar on the porch steps
Cradling stray kittens in our arms
Sitting in Hammock chairs and reading

And always the unpaved road
Running north to south
Across from the driveway
Mailbox across the street
The unpaved road with the bend in it
And the creek, and the fields, and the woods
Endless walks, every day, forever
Not really ours, but as much part of home
As any of the rest of everything

The row of maple trees, the pines, the cherry tree, the tree house tree with white blossoms, the linden tree which we planted, the apple trees, the peach trees, and the gardens

And the views of blue hills
Fields and hedgerows, watertowers
The stillness and the quiet
That everyone noticed
Whenever they visited
They always noticed the quiet

And the fire pit that I build and dug with my own hands and a shovel, “all by myself”
(But not really, I had help)

And the stone covered grave
Where we buried my girl
My sweet, black lab, coonhound baby
The one they adopted
The summer the year I was born

And the one who is still with us
Who has terrible arthritis
But still loves to go for walks

And all of the cats, so many, over the years.

I don’t want to leave this place.
I don’t want any of this to ever change.
I don’t want to lose this, I don’t want to have to give it up.

But mostly, I want to remember.
So I make it into words.

Happy Sunday.