5 Minutes: Your childhood home

(Preface: I wrote this awhile ago, but have been waiting for my husband to bring scrapbooks down from the attic so I could go through them for pictures. Now that I have access to old photos I can scan, I will be keeping up with the 5 Minutes posts better.)

The Your Life in 5 Minutes blog will publish weekly writing prompts, but she has given three at the beginning, presumably just to jump start things. So while I've already done one within the last week, here's a second:

Write about your childhood home, or a place that was special to you as a child: the backyard, your grandma’s porch, the corner store. Why was it special? Who was there?

My childhood home. Well, I had two, I guess. There's a third that I also have fond memories of.

The first one is the house I lived in until I was 7 years old. It was on Apollo Avenue in Anaheim, CA, a quite cul-de-sac. While living there, I attended Betsey Ross Elementary School. I remember that the home was a small ranch style house. There was no basement, other than a three foot crawl space with dirt for a floor. We had a covered patio out back, where we frequently ate dinner when the missionaries would come over. We had a modest (though big enough for an only child who was still young and thought everything was big) backyard where I played with friends in the Summer, in a plastic kiddie pool (a new one every year). On the side of the house, between the house and the fence, we had a garden. I don't remember what we grew there, other than carrots. I have memories of going out to the garden with my dad, him helping me to pull a big fat carrot up out of the ground, taking it inside to wash it off, then cutting it up and eating it together. We lived close enough that I watched the fireworks from Disneyland every night. I don't remember this specifically, but my dad told me that even at two years old, I was up, watching those fireworks, at 9:35 every night. He hated it, because he knew that early already that I was a night person, and not a morning person.

(April 1987 -- my mom made my Easter dress. I think I still have it somewhere. I love this dress.)

I remember the layout of the inside of the house. When you walked in the door, if you turned left, you'd be in the kitchen. It was long, and at the end of it was our table and chairs. It opened into the living room, which I remember as being really big, but was probably only actually about as big as the living room in the house I currently own. We had a sectional sofa on one end, and a wall unit on the other end, with a TV and a VCR in it (a TV that my parents still own and use, by the way, despite a heavily distorted picture). There was also a (now) old stereo system with tall speakers and a turn table. There was a sliding door to go out to the patio and backyard. The back of the living room opened via bi-fold doors onto a bedroom, which was my mom's sewing room and dad's "study" (that's what we've always called his office). Out that door was the long hallway, which you could also get to by turning right from the front entry way. Across the hall from the sewing room was my room. I had a bed with a canopy on it, which I loved. At the end of the hall on the left was my parent's room. Their bathroom was a hideous mint green color, which, as luck would have it, is currently the color of my bathroom, along with maroon. At the direct end of the hall was the other bathroom, all brown. It was carpeted.

(Father's Day, June 1985)

I lived in this house until I was seven years old. We'd outgrown it. It was a small and modest home to begin with. My parents bought it before I was born, despite marrying young, and the fact that I arrived barely two years after they married. My dad has a mind for practicality, though, and refused to buy a house until after they'd accumulated a full year's worth of food storage. They did, and they still have some of those same cans.

A few months before my sister was born, many changes came to our family -- new cars and a new house. We moved across town while my mom was pregnant. Our home was now two stories, and on a busy street: Orangewood Avenue, but still in Anaheim.This house had a living room and a family room. There were three bedrooms upstairs, and one downstairs, though the downstairs one was a sewing room/office/organ room. My new bedroom was big, maybe even twice as big as my old one. (Okay, probably not, but to a seven year, it felt like it). This house had three gables in the front of it, one in each upstairs bedroom. Christmas lights on that house looked pretty awesome. I remember being 10 years old and sitting on the ridgepole of the (quite steep) roof, having gotten there by myself, to help my dad hang the lights. Later, I climbed out the windows -- the second-story windows -- of each bedroom to hang wreaths above them.

(May 1990)

(May 1990)

This house had an ample, if somewhat ugly backyard. There was a fence two-thirds of the way to one side of the yard, blocking off a dirt area. I'm not sure what it had been previously used for.

(April 1988)

(February 1990)

Eventually, both the front and back yards were re-landscaped. We were to host a wedding reception at our home, so we had to make it pretty. The wedding was called off in the early morning hours of the scheduled date. I can only imagine that after all the expense they put into the yard (front and back), that this must have been frustrated to my parents, initially. They might have preferred to do things more gradually, given the opportunity. No matter, though. We also had a playhouse in the backyard. I think my mom had always wanted one for her daughters. It was pink, with heart-shaped decor, and blue and white accents.

These are both after the relandscape. You can see some prettiness in the background.

(June 1992)

(November 1991)

We lived there until I was 14 and we moved to Oregon. I loved the time I lived in Oregon, but I don't think of it as my "childhood" home.

The other house I mentioned is my great-grandmother's. We visited her so often that it became as familiar to me as my own home. While she was really sick one time, my mom and I even moved to Paso Robles to live with her. I remember it being something like three months, but my mom tells me it was only six weeks. I finished kindergarten in Bobbo's home. I learned to read there. I pestered her neighbors to let me practice reading to them: "Pat on mat. Cat on Pat. Hat on cat. Hat on Pat with cat." Bobbo had a basement full of old trinkets and tools left behind when her husband passed away. I'm not sure it had ever been cleaned out. I remember going down there with my cousins, but there wasn't really room to play, unless it was hide-and-seek.

(October 2007)

The backyard, however, was great for playing. There was a hill at the top of it that was great for running down. She had a latticework enclosure at the back of the yard with grapevines growing inside. The whole outside of the house was covered with ivy, giving it a distinction and impressive appearance. I always felt happy pulling up to Bobbo's house.

(March 1989 -- my sister looking out the kitchen window into the backyard)

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to see each of these houses again. The first one I didn't even recognize. The color was different, there was a picket fence, and the shrubs and tree in front were all gone. I also didn't remember it being packed in so close to the houses on either side of it, so I nearly missed it. The second home was different, but still easily recognizable. I'd seen pictures of it a few times over the years -- I still had friends who lived nearby. Bobbo's house was quite a surprise. It didn't have the ivy that it used to (the people who bought it after Bobbo died had allergies, so they pulled it all off then, which I knew already). I was shocked at how small and unremarkable it looked to me. My grandmother had told me that the home had been sold again and was being used as a private library (I think). Something like that. She'd had the opportunity a few years earlier to walk through the home and reminisce a bit, thanks to the woman who owned it at the time (but didn't live in it). My grandma had grown up in that house, so that had meant a lot to her.