Week 6, Prompt 3 of 3

26. You haven't been there since you were little. Now you go back....

I lived there for 15 years of my life.  It was small and I had to share a room with my younger sister and despite all that I didn't care.  It was home, and I was bitter to hear that we would be moving to a new house.
All these years I've held the entire house inside my head.  What a task to do, to remember all the little details.  The maple tree by the driveway, that we learned to climb on.  The ant hill that was covered in bustling ants every summer, parting and converging as I lowered sugar cubes to them.  The swing set, one swing cracked that no one used.  The lilac bush that filled June air with its fragrance.  The boathouse, with its history, where my dad and I found an Indian head nickel pressed between boards.  The elderly neighbor's chestnut tree that we raided every year, fascinated by the smooth varnish of each nut.  We were terrified of being caught, but I'm sure he had been charmed by our childish antics.
Inside, too, there were many memories.  The stenciled walls of the living room that my mother had personally painted, a pattern of grapes and fruit with ribbon.  The stools in the kitchen, each one claimed for years by family members; mine was the one with a wood grain pattern that looked like a tornado.  The spot by the mantle, where our increasing height had been marked in pencil.  I now easily looked down at the mantle.  I remember a time so far back that it's grainy, where I looked up at it, unable to imagine ever being tall enough to see the top.  The stairs we played on, the bedroom I shared with my sister, the space at the top of the stairs that was reserved for our many books.  So many details I have held, in my mind.
So, it was with a sense of pleasure and nostalgia that I accepted the invitation to take a walk inside from the new owners of the place.  I was done with college now, taking a trip down memory lane and my old street, reminiscing when I saw the new owner in the yard.  The fence posts were the same, the play house my parents had built.  The garden out front wasn't as fantastic as my mother's had been.  The front door was still cherry red.  The metal post that marked the property (a bane to inattentive children playing tag) still stuck its bent metal head out from the grass.
We talked about the peach trees my parents had planted years before, of how they still continued to yield so many peaches every year they threatened to kill themselves under their own weight.  Would I like to come in and see what they had done with the place?, she asked me, smiling.  How generous of her to offer.  How often does one get to see their childhood revisited so intimately?  Of course, I said, and in we walked together.
The closed in porch was different; different shoes, different coats, different furniture.  Here we had left tomatoes on the window sills to redden, the smell of tomato sauce filling the house as we worked to harvest and cook them all day long.  I quickly stepped into the house.
Gutted, the kitchen.  It was completely changed now.  I had watched my father adoringly as he prepared our dinner.  Played with our new puppy on the smooth linoleum tiles.  Learned how to cook chocolate chip cookies for the first time here.  I had to take in a sharp breath, following the woman like someone hoping to be led to salvation.
The living room was not mine.  It was not the same.  The stenciling had been painted over.  Onward, upstairs.  More chaos, more change.  I felt my chest get tight, gasping like a drowning person.  This was the building where our family had been whole.  We had had Thanksgivings, Christmases here.  I had once spent an entire evening trying to make a sandwich because so many trick-or-treaters were knocking at the door.  I told mom she could have the night off from dealing with Halloween.  This was the place where my parents had kissed, where they had been willing to be in the same room, where they had picked me up and squished me in between them, giving me a "sandwich hug".
I rushed down the stairs, needing to escape this alien landscape that was supposed to be the place of my childhood.  "Bet this all brings back memories, huh?" said the woman, still smiling.  "And we still kept the measurements of you kids getting bigger on the wall."  Time passing, so much time passing, marked in little lines of pencil.  I couldn't leave fast enough.