Today's something weird comes from the deep, odd recesses of my brain.
I take you back to my childhood. Not the parts that eventually send me to therapy, but the good parts.
It's the dead of winter. Winter the way I remember it; that blue haze of the moon on the six inches of stagnant snow outside at 4:30pm on a Sunday. The pangs of nausea setting into my stomach remembering I have to go back to school in the morning and that I probably had homework I should have done.
For whatever reason, my memories of winter as a child always scan back to Sunday nights.
My mom and I always spent Sundays cleaning the house. The distinct smell of cleaning products and the warm feel of a freshly vacuumed rug are fresh in my mind.
Soon the Clorox odor would be replaced with a more lucrative one; dinner.
Sunday dinners were the stuff of dreams. They were always big, always cozy.
I have a flash of a memory of a clean house, crescent rolls baking and Roseanne on the television in our old house.
I have a vivid memory of a Sunday night where I'm cleaning my absolute dumpster fire of a bedroom (seriously - I could've put every episode of Hoarders to shame) and watching Scream on FULL VOLUME while dinner was sending its aroma upstairs.
My room was a loft so it did not have a door - just stairs - that led up to the one, big room. Between the second to last stair at the top and the platform of the room itself, there was space for me to sit. My tv was close to that edge as well, so I would make a bag of popcorn and a root beer float (I've always been a really good snacker) and watch the predecessor to Adult Swim, which was some slightly risque cartoons on Cartoon Network while using that stair as a chair and the platform as a table. It was the perfect setup. I realize I haven't exactly painted a clear picture, but you'll get over it.
I have another flash of feeling exhausted after playing in the snow in the back yard with myself and the dogs all day pretending I was lost in a forest in the dead of winter and desperately trying to figure out how to climb to the top of our tool shed. I still have regrets for not trying harder to eventually accomplish that goal, but I had a healthy fear of my mother as a kid... and as an adult... and I knew she probably would have kicked my ass for that.
The old house was tiny. Perfect for just my mom and I and our two dogs. It looked like a log cabin inside the living room - which doubled as my mom's office/workspace. The ceiling panels were wooden and vaulted. There were tons of windows and a door that led to our back porch/back yard that was absolutely MASSIVE. The ceiling in the kitchen/dining area was slightly vaulted from the stairs that led up to the loft that was my room. My mother's room was what I think should have been an office, but it had beautiful French doors. The tiniest house with a ton of character and I swear to this day it was haunted as fuck. But I loved it. I still romanticize it in my head. Obviously.
Eventually Sundays in our new home were just as cozy and wonderful. Spending Sunday cleaning the house and getting dinner ready in time for me to watch Alias - which I stand by as a fucking gem of a show. After Alias was Prime Ministers Questions on C-SPAN because I have a variety of interests that do not make sense. Also, I had a weird thing for Tony Blair and for British politics, but that's another Something Weird onto itself.
But I digress.
The memories in our old home - our first home - together have a sparkle attached to them. It's interesting the way you don't appreciate the moments you're in when you're in them. It's something I've actually worked to do in my adult life - to appreciate a moment when it gives me the warm fuzzies even if for no reason.
The crunch of the autumn leaves in the driveway while playing basketball for hours on end are still very vivid to me. Getting up at 8am on a Saturdays in September and going rollerblading for two hours to try to master backward jumps up the curb are very vivid to me. Coming home after school on Halloween and watching the murder mystery episode of Saved by the Bell. The endless drama and fighting between my mother and I while we tried to close the pool at the end of the summer. Autumn was just full of special times.
My mother and I always laugh about a particular memory where we were raking our front yard and I was struggling to hold the bag open so she could put the leaves in it. She called me a "retard" at one point. At the time I was really hurt by it - as you would expect. But looking back, I know what a damn doofus I was as a kid and I can look at it with the perspective of a frustrated single mother just trying to get a simple task accomplished and laugh my ass off.
I also underused our pool, which is a damn shame - but to be fair, my best friend had one too and she lived across the street.
Summers in my old house were the best time of my life. If I could go back and watch any time of my entire existence, it would be that time. I lived maybe 200 feet away from my best friend - who is still my best friend to this day - and I would go wake her up every morning and we'd just fucking adventure around until the damn porch lights went on. We spent our days at the local pizza joint where we paid in change a lot, swimming in our pools, painting our nails, breaking glass bottles on the wall of the pizza joint, stealing posters of JTT and Nick Carter out of BOP magazines at the local convenience store, desperately trying to emulate Now & Then, eventually haunting the mall on our own, riding our bikes wherever they would take us, playing baseball in the streets, beating up the boys in our neighborhood, owning the neighborhood and having the best sleepovers of our lives.
Most of the time we stayed at her house because... well I'm not sure why, but I'm sure I could take a few stabs. We were too poor to provide any extra stuff. My mom didn't work on a 9-5 schedule, so she may have not wanted to be up all night and seeing as how my bedroom didn't have a door, it was kind of impossible to not keep her up at night.
Listen, I begged for a door the entire time we lived there.
But one night sticks out in my brain. We finally got the OK to have a sleepover at our house. And we got to watch our first rated R movie - our first horror movie. A movie I spent so much of my childhood watching. A movie that gave me an appreciation and love for horror movies. A movie I've already fucking referenced in this post; Scream. I remember us huddling up in front of my tv in my bedroom - a plethora of chips and dips and candies and pizza - so excited to watch for the first time. I remember the moment it ended we both looked at each other knowing it freaked us out and then immediately decided to watch it again. I remember giving each other makeovers. I remember laughing until daylight. I'll never forget that night because when I think back on it, it fills me with love and joy and warm fuzzies.
I remember how easy it was to climb out on the garage roof from my bedroom and I remember doing it at night in the summer. My secret place where I did my best thinking. Sorry, mom. At least I didn't die.
We moved out of the old house when I was sixteen. The poor little shell was collapsing in on itself, right down the grub worms in the front yard. We built a house 40 miles south of where we were and I have some fond memories there too, but no memories can top the sparkly ones from my old house.
The new buyers immediately knocked down our precious bungalow of love and sparkly memories and put up an all-brick misplaced two story house there. It looks ridiculous and I hate it.
I hate that I can't physically go back and see my home and my memories. Everything else on the block is relatively the same. My best friend's house is still there and still pretty much untouched.
But I will always have my sparkly memories that give me an ulcer from wishing I could go back and just take a look around so hard.
Ten internet points if you made it to the end.
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