When Life was....

When I was a little girl I liked to make mud pies. We had an alley behind my childhood house where I liked to get muddy and dig up worms. We didn't have a fence, but we had a row of peony bushes that separated our enormous yard from the alley. I LOVED the smell of those pink bushes but I did NOT like the ants required to keep them.

In the rear right hand corner of our yard stood a large pussy willow tree that I often liked to climb in with a book and sit and read. In front of that sat our garden where I'd help my Mom and Dad plant things and pick the beans when they were ready. Behind the house, sat a little red and white shed where my bike and the lawn mower was, and where we'd hide during games of hide and seek. Behind the shed was the clothesline we never used.

If I close my eyes I can still see the cracks in the pavement where we parked our car. I can hear the creaking of the heavy screen door on the side of the house as I open it and step inside to hang my coat up on the wall mount. You stepped into the house and could either go down the stairs to the basement where the washer and dryer were, along with the "family room" and my Dad's workshop where I built model airplanes. My eyes still closed, I can feel the cool painted concrete under my feet, and smell the familiar scent of dryer sheets and the metal of the tools. There was a fireplace that didn't work, but we hung our Christmas stockings from it. To this day I can't hear "I Can't Go For That" by Hall and Oates without thinking of that basement. Crazy how things like that attach themselves to our memories.

Back up the stairs, standing on the little platform you go up a stair into the tiny little kitchen. Our small round table sat in the left hand corner of the house between two windows. One, on the left and one on the front of the house. That was the window Pops would set a small black and white TV in the sill at Halloween and on the screen would be a pumpkin flashing. Courtesy of our fantastic Commodore 64. lol

That kitchen is where I learned to cook Filipino food by watching my Mom cook. She also loved to fry Spam and it was always served over a bed of steamed jasmine rice. OR we'd have roast beef hash, fried and served over rice. They were staples in our house. It's also where I learned how to make candy and lasagna from my Dad by watching him cook every Christmas. He would make divinity and peanut brittle and sugar cookies. We still have lasagna every Christmas Eve, only now I make it. He no longer makes cookies and candy but we still have the well loved cookbooks if I ever decide to pick it up again.

If you walked past the kitchen sink on your left, and go around the stove on your right, passing the wall phone with the 60 foot cord all wound around itself, you'd be in a small hallway. Turn left and you're in the living room with the only air conditioning unit in the house. That was where we all camped out and waited for the premier of Thriller. I can smell the air conditioner and hear the sound of the dial as my Dad turned it on.

If you didn't go into the living room, there was a door on your right that led upstairs to the loft-like bedroom my sisters and I shared (See Sleep is for Amateurs). I *still* know exactly each spot you had to perfectly place your foot so the stair wouldn't creek if you were sneaking downstairs to get a snack. I can still feel the railing that you had to hold onto to go up the creaky stairs.

If you went forward instead of going up the stairs you could then take a few steps and either go right into the den or as my Mom called it the "sewing room". Behind the door to that room was a floor vent where I would sit and get dressed over in the mornings during the Winter because I was ALWAYS cold. Sometimes I would sit with my pajama shirt pulled over my knees and let the hot air get trapped like a balloon. lol THEN I would put my uniform on. Back out into the hall and down the other way, the only bathroom was on the right and just at the end of the hall was my parents bedroom.

It's crazy to me that I can remember every detail of that house, every scent, and every sound. It was a time in my life where everything was right as rain. When life was.......simple. ;)

 CHEESE!!!!!!!! lol toldja