When I was a child....

I lived across the street from where I do now. I could look over and see the trees I helped my dad plant.....all big, tall and blowing in the wind.

I remember the first time we had to rake those leaves up....from the trees we planted. I think it might have been the first and last time I raked those leaves. I remember the smell out that day, I remember the sun shining on us but not in a hot way, in a way that made you feel happy to be alive.

i remember the inside of that house as if I was 4 years old again. Every part of it. I remember all my mother's plants which I almost killed off in a water overdose. They sat all over the house and hung everywhere. She watered them and talked to them. I used to wonder why she talked to them but they were all over, green and alive and I figured she talked to them to keep them alive. After all I would hate for her to not talk to me. I remember my mom sitting on our orangish couches beading all day and night. I would sneak and eat her beads.

I remember my dad catching me in my playhouse I had every bottle of my mom's shapoos, conditioners, oils, and lotions and I was mixing them with a spatula in a huge mixing bowl. I had no idea how long my dad was watching me. But he gave a sudden movement that caught the corner of my eye and I jumped. I ran out of the playhouse and luckily estimated which way he was coming. He chased me around and around that house saying he would spank me when he caught me. I ran at 6 in the morning in my raggedy ann nightgown around and around until I made a quick exit out of my room, only to find him waiting for me. He swept me up in his arms and I was so scared he would spank me I started kicking him. He did a big dramatic fall in the living room. With me landing on top of him. He looked at me with sad eyes and said "I'm dead." "Daddy no" I kept saying over and over...I lay on his chest and opened his eye lids peeking at his blank stare. i was so scared but somehow I knew to see if he was breathing. I put my cheek up to his nose and I felt the slight warmth coming from his nostrils. I KNEW he was faking and I knew he was ticklish. So I tickled him back to life.

I remember my Aunt Kathy babysitting me in that house and playing Barbies with me, she was my hero. I remember long summer days in the backyard with my little brother. I remember talling my little brother when we was in our bedroom, that the cord hanging down was really a vine and if he swung from it he would be Tarzan...he did, of course. The stereo it was connected to bashed him on the head, blood gushed out and I cried. He still has the scar and brings it up every now and again, like he really remembers it.

I remember sitting in my mom's green charger the day we left that house...with all of it's memories behind. The bedroom we grafitii-ed up because my dad was supposed to paint it. The two cats William and Sylvester and our dog Lucky, the trees we planted...I looked at them all through the rear window.

Today I only look out my living room window to see that house with a different family living there, enjoying the barricade of the trees I planted with my dad.

I have my own house now, in my hometown. A place for my children to always come home to and trees we need to plant.