The place where time stood still

So we made the trip up north for a longish Easter weekend, which is always interesting.  Like every other weekend, my mom watched my sister's kids (and their dog), while she and my brother in law (and my step-dad) worked hospital shifts.  So a few days into the two barking dogs/six kids/too much chaos for a small house, I had to get out and go for a drive...

Just tooling around, I noticed that the house we used to live in (from when I was 3-8) was for sale, it turns out for the first time since my mother sold it exactly 30 yrs ago.  So we just had to look up the listing and oddly it is almost completely as it was back then. Like a time capsule or something. (A bit of trivia, Ann Landers (Eppie Lederer) used to live down the block in a similar little house when her husband worked for my step-great grandfather. Her sister, Dear Abby, was married to my step-mother’s cousin.) So wild...

This one was my younger sister's and my room.  It was actually the dining room that was converted, with two doors (and a closet to the left), so the house was circular and we could run around it endlessly.  I'll spare you the bright orange carpet from the basement.

But beyond the kitchen and carpet (the late 70s/early 80s may have been one of the worst times for design ever), my mom even put that wallpaper in the bathroom.  I have a million memories made here: playing in the yard and climbing the swing set like a monkey, dancing with my mom in the kitchen, watching my dad in his huge workshop in the back of the garage (pre-divorce), learning to ride a bike in the driveway and endless circles around the block (and venturing the block to dairy queen and the gas station for candy), our friends down the block who had a tree house, and the only years I shared a bunk bed with my younger sister.

I applaud my mother for making this a happy house for us, given it was the years +/- the divorce.  I barely remember my parents being together, as even when they still were my father was usually in the workshop when he wasn't at work.  So when they finally split, life for us (well for me anyway) didn't seem that different in this house.

Part of me understands why people would want to raise their kids in a house they grew up in, but as I told my best friend from elementary school when we ran into each other at the park while I was home, I just can't even imagine living in this town again.  It's a touchstone, but one in a far off (closed off) world forever sealed in my memory.  Kind of like this little white house.