“A Personal Narrative”

by Katherine Stiff

On a relatively rainy and blustery day in September, I packed up the contents of my room into several boxes and christened them each “Katie’s Belongings” with a rather dry red marker. It was an unfortunately long name to scrawl on each one, but something about the amount of letters made me feel more grown up in a way, as if the moving company workers would be impressed with the old-fashioned vocabulary of an impossibly peculiar ten year old. I was exhilarated, not attached to anything enough to be sad about leaving.

I would forget this place, and it would forget me. Just like every other house and street and neighborhood I had lived in over the course of my life. There were almost too many to count, so I kept a tally in a small blue notebook by my bed. This would be the fourteenth move, I had calculated, and things would be different this time. I was promised at least four years in this new house, which was ample time to make a friend and perhaps begin to grow metaphorical roots as I had seen people do in movies. I was delighted with the thought of having something I could be familiar with. I would find a lovely tree stump in the forest of my backyard, and I would call it My Tree Stump, because I was going to be there for a while, and these are the kinds of things people can do when they know they’re not leaving. I would also stand by the pantry door on the tips of my toes and have my mother pencil how much I had grown, because these are the sorts of things people did who did not have to worry about the paint in their rented house.

Finally, I would find another girl around my age, and we would laugh over the same things, explore the woods around our houses, have sleepovers, and pretend to be mystical beings together. I would call her my best friend, because that’s the sort of thing people do when they know they’ll be allowed to grow up with someone. As you may infer, I had big plans, as big as plans can be when you’re ten years old and in love with the idea of a new beginning. Approximately two days after sealing my boxes with sticky sweet packing tape, I found myself staring up at an impossibly huge brick colonial house. I believed it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The windows all had navy shutters framing them on the outside, and the brick was a dark reddish brown that looked worn enough to have an exciting history, but still look lovely in a vintage sort of way. The front yard was covered in lush green grass, with a stone pathway cutting through it leading to the front door. The pathway was lined with flowers of all different colors that I knew I would sketch eventually, because they were the sort of pretty that deserved a picture. I marveled to find that the house had steps leading up to the front porch, and a huge wooden door, complete with a brass knocker.

It was everything I had ever imagined a house could be, and I would be living in it. Perhaps, when I was older and had my first date, the boy would walk me up those steps to the beautiful wooden front door and give me my first kiss. Perhaps, when I got my first car, I would park it on the gorgeously gleaming black driveway. I had so many visions of myself in that house, it certainly must be haunted by everything I wanted to do. Perhaps the future owners will sometimes hear the clinking of shoes, after I’m long gone, as I practice walking in my first pair of high heels across the wooden floor, or the joyful slam of the front door as I gallop to the mailbox to see what has come today. I had a million ideas before I stepped even one foot in that house. As you can imagine, the inside was just as beautiful as the outside, with a winding staircase, gigantic windows that let streaming sunlight in, an ornate sitting and dining room complete with delicate paintings on the ceiling, and my very own bedroom on the second floor.

My room was my favorite part of that whole glorious house. It was the biggest one I had ever had, and was shaped like giant L. I had my bed and dresser in one portion of the L, and a small sitting room in the other, which housed my desk and bookshelves. I had three windows, which looked out upon the neighborhood and the full forest surrounding it. My mother painted the walls petal-pink and lime-green for me, by request, and I decorated with flowers and bright colors. Everything was perfect, and nothing could compare to that first night, falling asleep in my bed, in my room, in what I was so happy to call my house. I could have sworn I was living in a fairytale, and that anything could happen if I believed hard enough. I made my first friend, Kara, a few days after getting completely settled. She lived perfectly diagonal to my house, in a white colonial with grey stone detail. We became fast friends, and the rest came exactly how I had imagined. Kara and I spent hours exploring the woods surrounding our neighborhood, pretending to be adventurers in a fantastical story, or riding our bikes around our circular cul-de-sac, feeling the Virginia breeze through our hair. Our favorite game was make-believe. We could pretend to be anything, and would always set up our story to make us the heroes. I felt completely alive, and happier than I had ever been. Our mothers became best friends as well, and would talk for hours while Kara and I played our games of pretend.

When school started, our mothers would walk us to the bus-stop with coffees in their hands and wave goodbye as we did the same out the windows of the bus. At the end of the day, they would be there to pick us up, and every Friday my mother would make some sort of treat for us to celebrate the end of the week. As I came to know more and more of the neighborhood kids, it became a routine for everyone to come over on Fridays to experience my mother’s legendary desserts. I grew to have such a friendship and family with everyone in my neighborhood, which was something I had never gotten to experience before. It had a feeling of completeness to it, that I’m sure isn’t rare, but was new to me. When Fall came, all the leaves changed to breathtaking tones of amber, light brown, and sun-kissed gold. Kara and I would rake up huge piles of the leaves and then take turns jumping into them, relishing the glorious crunch and soft padding they provided. In winter, the snow piled up high to the windows, and beckoned us outside to sled and take part in impromptu snowball fights. In spring, the flowers began to grow again and new life emerged. My mother and I made a nightly routine of walking down to the pond a few streets over and watching for the baby geese or tadpoles. When summer came and school was finally out, all the children breathed a glorious sigh and felt a cumulative infinity. One night every week we would all lace up our sneakers and run outside to play kick the can, or capture the flag. Kara and I always stuck together, and I loved having someone to call my best friend. My first summer there, I was overjoyed to get my first popsicle from the ice cream man. Such a simple thing meant so much to me. As it melted down my finger to be caught by my quick tongue, I couldn’t imagine anything better in the world. I was in that house for four years before we moved away.

Kara and I cried for hours the day I left, and I could hardly see my beautiful house through my tears as we drove away. Perhaps it was because I was still a child with a naivety of the world, but I can’t think of anything bad about those years. Everything was so simple, and absolutely anything was possible. Looking back, a lot of it was my innocence and ignorance that made it so wonderful. I did not know that my parent’s marriage was crumbling inside that house on Hempstead Lane, or that there were horrible things going on in the world, or that when the people two houses away moved away it was because their child had died. I did not know that some people in this world are truly mean, and that boys would break my heart someday, or that one day I wouldn’t have any connection with my father. I didn’t know that one day I would look back and realize how much those years truly meant. I learned about myself and began to become who I would truly be in that house.

Many childhood beliefs were crushed for me in those four years, but many still stay true. I still believe that good will always triumph over evil, and that friendship and love are the strongest things in this world, and that magic exists inside of the good things people do. I still believe that happiness is the sound of the ice cream man coming down the street and that make-believe is better than any computerized game. I believe that I will always carry a piece of who I was then with me, and I believe I will be able to go back someday, even if it’s just in memories. I believe we all have our own Hempstead Lane, and that it’s never just a house. It’s a place in time untainted by memories that will always flash through our heads, even if only for a moment, when we hear the word heaven.