It's not about the house

It seems to me that a sense of place, "where we are," and "where we came from," is a huge part of who we are and why we're the way that we are. Our earliest settings serve as a frame of reference for the millions of other settings in which we will find ourselves our whole life long.

I'm one of the few people I know who grew up in the same house - 1611 Driftwood Drive in Oak Cliff, Texas (actually in Dallas, but "Oak Cliff" is an important part of the location). I wasn't born in that house, but I got there as fast as I could! Mom and Dad bought it when I was six months old, and we didn't sell it for forty-plus years, after Mom's death. If the walls could talk!

I still remember lots of the physical details about the house - it was white brick with pink trim (at least until the last 10 years or so). In the best 50's tradition, the main bathroom was painted pink, and black and white tiles covered the floor and halfway up the walls. The kitchen was painted yellow, with wooden cabinets covered in shellac and RED FORMICA counters. (I TOLD you it was 50's). Aunt Sissie said the house always smelled like fresh coffee.

But the den was my favorite room. It was paneled in knotty pine, top to bottom - I didn't think about it feeling like a cabin at the time, but it did. It felt snug and comfortable. The room was lit by a wagon wheel-type chandelier (I am not making this up), and there was this great picture of a train rolling off into the sunset - the main thing the viewer sees is the red caboose. How many times I rode that train somewhere in my mind! When it was cold enough, we lit a fire in the fireplace - and that was the best time of all; the only better time was when Santa left stockings that were so heavy they had to be placed on the hearth.

I've never seen a house as empty as the day my sister and I took one last walkthrough before we closed on the sale. I wasn't sure I'd be able to breathe. That was the day I discovered that a house is only a shell for the things that go on inside of it. Instead of being as grief-stricken as I expected to be, saying goodbye to that formative place after 40 or so years, I found myself saying thanks to Mom and Dad for all the gifts they gave my sisters and me. A great place to grow up, for sure, but so much more.

They say that when you dream of a house, you're dreaming about yourself, and the things that go on inside of you. I can't count the number of times that I've dreamed about 1611 Driftwood over the years, probably as I worked out things about myself in the realm of dreams. Even after Paul and I got married, Driftwood was the "dream house" of choice. But funny - when we became parents, the house of dreams became the one where we lived. A sense of place indeed.

So how did this place of red formica kitchens and pink-and-black bathrooms shape me? At the very least, it gave me a sense of rootedness. I have no question "where I came from." I learned that I had more "neighbors" than the ones next door, the Monks on one side and the Crawfords on the other. If I wanted to be with friends, all I had to do was cross the street or go down a couple of doors. If I wanted to be alone, the woods of Lower Kiest Park began at the end of the street. My parents loved me enough to let me decorate my bedroom door, top to bottom, with stickers and posters - and to wait to refinish it until I went to college! I learned that we could grieve, laugh, fight, study, and play - sometimes together, sometimes alone - and still be family. And I learned that when I talk about home, as much as I loved it, it's not about the house.