Persevering Paige

My first home was an apartment in Manassas, Virginia that my parents brought me to in the days after I entered the world while my father fixed up a family home in Culpeper for us to move into. That home in Culpeper was on the street ‘Lesco Boulevard’, and little did I know then, that it would become more than just my childhood street. I lived there until I was 10. My father died in a very painful way in late May when I was 7. My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 10, and we were still residing in that house. I confronted both of those realities there. Before and between those happenings, there were many sunny days spent in the backyard, many laughs, sibling births, and so much joy there.

My mother re-married when I was 11 and she and my step-father began to look for a new house.

I remember riding in the car with my mother, brother, and sister to Reva, Virginia following the real estate agent. It seemed like a world away to an 11 year old even though it was really only 15 minutes down the road. I remember thinking in my head that no house would ever compare to Lesco Boulevard, that I would never be as connected to a place as I was with my childhood home, the only place I ever lived with both of my parents. You don’t have to tell me that those are mature thoughts for an 11 year old to have, I know, and yes, I have always been that way.

We pulled onto a private, gravel road, lined at the beginning with what looked like a row of Christmas trees on the side. The second house on the left and the only white one was where we stopped. It was the only house on the street with a paved driveway, a garage, and a sun-room. I had a frown on my face, quite unimpressed. Yet, as I opened the car door and ran out onto the side of the backyard from the driveway, my face beamed with joy and happiness. I had a smile as big as one could imagine. I felt the air hit my body as I ran quickly down the hill. I yelled across the yard to my siblings, “Do you guys see how big this yard is?! This house is so nice!” My Mom and step-father ended up putting an offer on the house and the owners took it. It would officially become our new home. I was about to start middle school, so what a perfect time for a new home.

I originally moved into the basement bedroom because I was the oldest. My first night in that bedroom was strange and unfamiliar. There was a noise coming from the storage room (which happened to be in that room) that sounded like a dog out of breath. I fell asleep to the feeling of accepting the unordinary. I eventually traded rooms with my younger sister and have been in the same bedroom ever since.

My Mom adopted the room upstairs that was supposed to be the living room as her “special room”, because she kept her precious white couches in there. She conditioned herself to vacuuming it two times a day at the very least, so that she could see the lines in the pink carpet perfectly, like some adore to see in their grass made from the lawnmower. She would take the pillows off of the couches every few days to add life to them, let them sit there a few hours, and then put them back on. Even though it was the living room, not much living went on there. She never allowed my siblings or I in it. She said that we could mess up any other room in the house but we were not to mess up this one. I remember a few times my little brother going into the room and my Mom swiftly calling for him to get out. That room became the space that breathed her name and spoke her presence into my heart for ten difficult, important years. It was a unique room, with pink carpet. If you sat there long enough, you just might be able to pick out the individual strands. The lamps on the sides of the couches complimented the couches perfectly, and the picture frame above it matched the colors of the room. We all associated the picture frame and lamps with the couches.

My Mom passed away on December 24, 2010, on my fourteenth birthday, from metastasized breast cancer. I confronted the reality of being parent-less in that very room. I confronted the hard fact of my birthday, a day that is supposed to be celebrated by someone, become melancholic, a day that would be hard to be joyous. I watched the funeral home men carry my mother out of the house, past the her room, and down the pink stairs on Christmas Eve.

I moved out of the house after that for most of my high school years. I had some things to sort out, it was too hard to be there. Then, towards the end of my junior year, I needed to move back. My uncle told me he “had a feeling that one day I would circle back there”.

For ten years after my mother’s passing, I inhabited this house, thanks to the hard work of my step-father who worked to keep it. I was surrounded by all of my mother’s things in this house. I feel her so deeply there. I sat in her beloved room for hours upon hours, appreciating it, soaking it in, and writing in it. I walked past projects that remained un-finished due to unfair death. I stared into rooms and closed my eyes and saw my mother enter them, recalling almost perfectly her every movement from my memory. I used my Mom’s southern living dishes, and as I opened the cabinet, I saw the September 2010 calendar pass me just as she had left it taped to the cabinet door. I looked at spaces in the house and remembered moments we had there, talks, and fights. I spent years in my room that had been my room from middle school, to high school, to college, feeling as if I still had normalcy in my life. I brought people I loved to this house to meet or visit with my family, sometimes, people I loved more than they loved me. I spent hours downstairs with my step-dad watching old western movies, Captain Ron, Cape Fear, and Leo movies, talking to him about life. I spent many Christmas’s, Thanksgivings’, Easter’s, and Fourth of July’s here. I spent nights outside in the driveway talking and looking at the stars. I had my best friend Reagan over to laugh and dance and talk. I had many people pick me up here, take me out, and bring me home. I cried many tears here, and got over many heartbreaks. I thought I would never overcome my depression here. I spent time feeling connected to my Mom here, in the embrace of her precious things, which almost made up for the many years I unfairly lost with her. It has been my safe space for ages. It has been the place that I can run to when I need to break because I can’t possibly stand any longer. It has withstood every storm, standing strong in it’s place…and quite similarly…so have I.

The realization that my step-dad is about to put this house on the market has not been an easy one for me. It will be hard for a very long time. It is something I cry about and struggle with every day. It is losing my safe space, losing the last physical part of my Mom. It feels like she will really be gone once this house is occupied by a new family.

Oh, sweet house. Dear sweet house, though people may not think as highly of you because you have tiles over wallpaper, unfinished redecorating, blemishes, and stains…you are more than anyone could ever comprehend. No one could ever love you more.

As I stood outside in the starry, dark night with my boyfriend Braden the other day, looking at the house from an angle and crying while explaining to him how much anguish this has been causing me, I realized that the selling of this house is the end of my childhood. I never thought I had much of a childhood. Frankly, I felt I had been robbed of one because cancer, substance abuse, death, depression, and tears consumed much of it…however, as I cried about the loss of this house, I affirmed something I needed so deeply to know.

I had a childhood full of so much love, authenticity, and joy of the most genuine kind.

A house, I have found, can be a mirror onto yourself, to teach you about standing strong, hope, weathering storms, the dreary winters, the most intense and overbearing summer heat, torrential downpours, and utter wreckage and ruin..

I will take a part of you with me everywhere I go. I can’t imagine not having you, but I will love you from afar.

A house is full of your mom’s things, even though she doesn’t reside there anymore. She is heavenly.

As we decide which of my Mom’s things to keep and which to sell, thank you for teaching me that the best part of my Mom was a girl and the people who lived in you all along. That if I look in the mirror, if I look at my habits, and the most intrinsic parts of myself, I will find her, where she has always lived.

Thank you for being my safe space.

I am happy to think of one day, finding a new house, with my own family, that feels like just like home.

As for you, I know you will still be standing strong.

Thank you for teaching me that sometimes, a house can be a home.