"Tear down the house that I grew up in, I'll never be the same as then."

I close my eyes for one whole minute.

As the seconds tick away, so do the four walls around me.   Gone are my laptop, desk, picture frames. Disappeared have my bed, dragonfly lights, guitars.  Replacing them is the warm rock gravel under my feet, the sweet smell of shaded grass in the afternoon.  High above me I hear the rustle of sunkissed evergreens as the river-wind caresses them back and forth. I open my mouth and breathe.  Earthy, mossy dampness collides with clean, fragrant dryness and I swallow big gulps of this unforgettable country air.

                                   Tear down the house that I grew up in
                                    I'll never be the same again

                                   Take everything that I've collected

                                    And throw it in a pile

I know by instinct that the river is in front of me.  Beyond the meticulously kept lawn and beautiful flowerbeds, after the lengthy driveway, across Starr Road, and beyond our unfriendly neighbor's houses.  There,the Clackamas carves its blood and life through rock and sand. Mighty river. I splashed in your shallows before I could talk.  I swam with your salmon and I floated your rapids and I learned from your watery peacefulness.  I learned also from your roaring anger. I remember being afraid of your green depths, and yet jealous of them also and the solitude they must afford some river creatures of the deep.

I know by memory that the woods are to my left, and also to my right.  To my left, they climb a high knoll that is shaded entirely during the morning and afternoon. But come sunset, as the sun descends low into the sky, suddenly the knoll is surged by light and the trees are blasted with warmth and virtue. Tangled knoll. Many times I tried to scale your height.  Many times I lost sight of the house whilst doing so.  No matter how high I climbed, I never could seem to reach your ridge.  Time and time again, I emerged at the bottom tired and battleworn with scars and scratches to prove my failure. Discouragement does not come easily to those who are very young, however.  And I never gave up trying. 

The woods to my right were mostly untouched, as they grew deeper than the ones on the knoll, and no amount of low sun could light their dark shadows.  But still, curiosity overwhelms a young spirit, and in the mindless hours of Summer afternoons, I did sally forth cautiously. The woods are silent with age and ripe with invisible life.  Many times did I hear, but never see, the scamper of rabbits and other forest creatures as they raced away from my tumbling footfalls.  Haunted woods.  I hated how I made myself go alone into your realm. I remember the campfire my sisters built on the outskirts of your treed soul.  A campfire outlined by smooth stones, and surrounded by chopped tree stumps for those delicious adolescent parties that you dream so hazily of when you are too young to witness them, too young to stay up past your bedtime, the same time that the fires are first lit. 

                                   Bulldoze the woods that I ran through

                                   Carry the pictures of me and you

                                   I have no memory of who I once was

                                   And I don't remember your name

                                  

I know by familiarity that the house stands directly behind me.  I dare not turn around.  All I wish is to open my eyes to see it standing in front of me, but instinctively I know if my eyes are opened, all of this beauty around me is lost. And so I keep them tightly shut.  Beloved home.  You bore me for my first nine years, and I have not forgotten your magic.  I feel the creak of the porchboards beneath my feet, and I almost smell the heavy, wet air in which we watched many thunderstorms from the safety of that covered, wraparound porch.

                                     Park the car that I love the best

                                     Inspection's due and it won't pass the test

                                     It's funny how I have to put it to rest

                                     And how one day, I will join it

Blue is the color of my childhood.  Blue was our beautiful front door.  Blue was the color of our wood stove.  Blue was the sky in those warm Summer months.  Blue was my childhood bedroom, my dresser.  Blue, the baseboards in Katie's room. Blue, speckled into the carpet in the upstairs living room. Blue, the beanbag chair in my cubby-hole. Blue, the cover of our trampoline.  Blue, the pots and dishes in our yellow kitchen. Blue, blue, blue.

Green was the grass, the pride of my father's midlife. Green was our family room carpet. Green were the countertops in mine and my sisters' bathroom. Green were the frogs that choired our fishpond.  Green, the evergreens and maples which fueled my love for nature. Green was our outdoor furniture. Green was my turtle-shaped sandbox. Green were the plants in our flowerbeds.  Green, the vegetables in our garden.

Yellow was our happy, laughter-filled kitchen.  Yellow was Hallie's bedroom across the hall from my own. Yellow, the leaves first turned in Fall.  Yellow were the snapdragons-turned-puppets by my sisters. Yellow were the swings my father swung me from every day. The first one small enough for a baby.  The last one for a little girl.  Faster, higher. 

                             I remember crying over you

                        And i don't mean like couple of tears and I'm blue

                     I'm talking about collapsing and screaming at the
                     moon

                      But I'm a better man for having gone through it

                       Yes I'm a better man for having gone through

There is so much to treasure, so much to share and make careful note of, and so little time and space to accomplish it all.

Brown is the dirt that surrounded my existence.  Brown, the squishy, freshly tilled dirt in our garden come planting time.  I used to follow behind my dad as he pushed the rototiller back and forth. I took so much pleasure in squishing the cool dirt between my tiny toes. Brown was the barkdust shoveled in piles year after year. "Barkstuff" as Katie said when she was younger. 

I remember the hammock and I remember the garage that stood apart from the house, in front of the woods on the right side. I remember the skunk that made its home underneath my Grandpa's Pontiac in our garage. I remember the bats that took refuge in the attic above my parents' bedroom.

I remember climbing the attic ladder in the garage.  Smell of mothballs and molding insulation, oh, I remember the excitement of finding something beautiful among all the old.  I remember the fear of falling straight through the ceiling. 

                                 Ever since I learned how to curse

                                 I've been using those sorry old words
                         But I'm talkin' to these children and I'm keeping it 
                              clean
                                 I don't need those words to say what I mean
                                No, I don't need those words to say what I mean

I remember the unit attached to the other side of the garage, where my Grandma Annie used to live.  I remember the exact way it smelled. I remember the spider I once found in her old bathroom, long after she died.

When she was alive, her apartment always smelled of cookies.  My cousin and I picked her flowers, and toddled over on our chubby, two-year-old legs to give them to her. She had coloring books and crayons in a basket underneath the TV. 

I remember the well-used bikes tucked up in the garage.  I remember the Thanksgiving that Katie found a strange black cat on the knoll.  I remember a year after, when she had her first batch of kittens. 

I remember the parties and the twinkle lights and the music that came from the series of outdoor speakers.  Oh, the pride my father took in those beauties.  I remember burning days, when my dad piled up everything he no longer needed and burned it in a huge pile.  I remember my mom worrying about the Fire Marshall and fines and words that I was too young to understand as I danced excitedly around the burn pile.  Burning days always meant fresh roasted hot dogs.  In the midst of her worrying, my mother would pile hot dogs,  buns, ketchup and potato chips in a basket and carry it down past the garage, past my grandmother's space, and to the border of the woods, where I sat in a green chair and chattered endless, mindless four-year old chatter while my dad burned and burned, and together, the two of us roasted hot dogs for lunch. 

I remember cutting days.  When entire weekends were taken up by the arduous task of cutting down trees.  What a smell. What a mess.  What a wondrous excuse to take a day off school.  We always had chili on cutting days.  

                                        Tear down the house that I grew up in
                                        I'll never be the same again

                                       Take everything that I used to own
                                       And burn it in a pile

I remember starry nights.  Us girls slept all night long on the trampoline many times. I slept in the middle. Hallie slept on the side closest to the forest, and Katie slept nearest the house. There were times when we had small fires and roasted marshmallows in the firepit on our driveway. Dad and Hallie built it themselves, laid stone after stone and mortared them together.  I helped carry the stones.  I sat on top of them in the wheelbarrow. 

The best nights were right before Fall, right as it starts to get chilly at night.  Hallie, Katie and Dad would shoot hoops and have long talks on those nights.  I sat on the back of the basketball hoop and dreamed of the day when I would be big enough to shoot hoops and talk about boys, too.

I remember during Fall and Winter, my one task was to run through all the house, and plug in all the candle-lights in each of the windows just as it was getting dark.  Driving up the driveway to that beautiful custom-built home, lit up by small candles in each window was one of the most breathtaking sights to ever behold.
Even more awe-inspiring were the Christmas lights that went up year after year. 

I remember the two staircases we had, one at each end of the house.  I used to think, "one for going up, and one for going down,"  and the idea had stuck.  I went up at one end of the house, and down at the other.

I remember my tree fort that my dad built me all by himself. The tree it wrapped around became infested with ants, and I never went up there after that. 

                                    And bulldoze the woods that I ran through

                                    Carry the pictures of me and you

                                    I have no memory of who I once was

                                    And I don't remember your name

Scraped knees, sunburns, watermelon stains, and dirty feet.  I remember them all. I remember the volleyball net, and I'll never forget playing on the scaffolding that was erected during the second addition onto the original garage: a storage unit for dad's work equipment. 

River, trees, house, dirt, I cannot count the ways in which I have been shaped by these elemental beings.

And after too many years of forgetting how to swim in a river, while pads of feet grow too soft and fleshy to walk barefoot on gravel,  and of growing wary and jumpy of unnamed and unforeseen insects, I'm finding myself again becoming lost in the flow of the country.  

Happy is the color of the memories I have collected; thankful, the color of the instincts I've reawakened. 

Alive is the color of my childhood. Wisdom, the color of all she has taught me. 

                                  Tear down the house that I grew up in

                                  I'll never be the same again

                                  Carry the pictures of me and you

                                  And throw it in a pile

Xx,

Hannah