Losing A Part Of My Past

You probably know how sentimental I tend to be, if you read my blogs.  I struggle with changing times, not wanting to forget the past, my need to remember things that are a part of me and who I am today.

A couple years ago I learned that someone new purchased the home my family lived in for most of my life.  A place we called Hidden Acres, nestled in the woods and built by my step-father and my mother.  Shaded by trees, off the road a quarter of a mile, and it was a home to my parents, my sister and my brother and me.  The entire open back basement was the living quarters in the beginning and then slowly but surely the split level was built and then the upstairs was added on.

There I learned to play in the woods, climb trees, ride bikes, take care of our animals and grow up thinking that everyone wore sweatshirts most to the summer.  I shared a room with my sister for years and eventually we had our own bedrooms when the upstairs was built.  I had wonderful slumber parties with my friends in the big room up-stairs, it was where my brother recovered from a broken leg and for a couple years it was even a pre-school classroom.  More memories there that I can possibly take time to acknowledge.

Two years ago was the first time I'd visited our old home in over thirty years.  I still lived just a field away from the house I grew up in.  One day I went exploring,  I walked around, marveling at the changes.  Trees were bigger, the chicken houses gone, a big ugly garage had been built that distorted the view of the house when you drove up the long lane.   I took pictures and reached back in my memory and enjoyed the innocence of growing up in the 50's and 60's.  I took my girls and my grandchildren to see the house I grew up in.   

The house had been abandon by the third owners, they just couldn't take care of it properly, it was pretty much a hoarding mess.  They picked up and left everything.  Vandals broke windows and animals called it home.  And then the most recent owners started cleaning it up, hoping to restore it to it's original beauty.  But living in a woods and trees growing close to the house caused damage to the foundation, the expense of fixing it would be great.  So it sat empty another year.

It was decided, the house must come down.  My parents sweat and labor of so many years was going to be destroyed in a day.   I had sense enough to ask about the two old doors I remember going in and out of all those years.  Those heavy old handmade doors my step-Dad made, were solid wood, bolts holding it together, and black hardware hinges.  A very small part of the solid and well built house we called home. There were two such doors that stood the test of years and I ask if I could have them.  

I came home one Saturday night and found them leaning against a wall in our barn, the only part left of the home we grew up in. Yes, sometimes it is just hard to lose something that held so many memories.