A Playing House

The house I grew up in is open, sunny.  Big windows, few carpets.

It is a playing house.

It is a house where there is space to dance all the way across the hardwood floor if you want to,

A house where the plants are tall and a child could hide behind them.

A house with a wild unkempt garden like a jungle

And three rooms all in a row  where three children, all in a row, laughed together, hid together, yelled and fought and loved one another.

It is a good house.

I am about to leave it.

My room is the second of the three, just like  me, and it is a lovely room, a room for reading, staying up late.

I am about to have new rooms, a new home, and this one, this one will be given away.

I will start my new life,  cast off high school like a too-small coat and start again,

And this house will not be waiting for me, this playing house with its wrought iron gate and its blue door that speaks of hope.

That’s okay. I don’t mind.

Houses shouldn't wait, it is so lonely for them. They like to be filled.

My family can fill it no longer, we have grown and dispersed and explored

So  someone else will.

I imagine a little girl, about eight perhaps, moving into the second room. I imagine her painting it yellow, I had a yellow bedroom once, a long time ago. I imagine her unpacking dolls and books and I imagine her saying to her friend at school, I moved to a new house, come over and see, I want you to see.

I hope she will like this house, that little girl.

I hope she learns that the sneakiest hide and seek spot is at the foot of the bed in the first room, no one can see you there. I hope she learns that even on the darkest nights no one ever jumps through the big picture window in her room. I hope that she learns that sitting in front of the living room fire place on Thanksgiving after the pie is the best feeling on earth, and that under the deck there’s a cave where there are cement blocks and planks and maybe monsters, just maybe. I hope she climbs up on the roof and looks at the stars with her best friend, wrapped in a blanket, speaking in hushed voices, as if she is at church. I hope she kisses a boy right beneath that blue door frame. I hope she bakes cookies in the oven and remembers to put it to a few degrees below the recipe, it runs hot, that oven.

I hope she does.

I am ready to give it to her, this house.

I am ready to let someone else laugh and sleep and cry here, someone else’s memories to paint these walls.

Just as long as she agrees:

She must play here. This is a playing house.