Happy Place

Sometimes they sell your happy place.

My childhood home is about to be for sale. The photo shoot is done. The listing will go live soon. All that’s left is to sit back and wait, and to reflect on what Miranda Lambert would say is “the house that built me”.

Val Terrace has been our family home since 1986. I was 10 when we moved in. It’s wasn’t our first house, but it was the first house I ever loved. I got my own room for the first time on Val Terrace. I got to pick out the yellow wallpaper with pink hearts, and pink wall to wall carpeting. I got a phone in my bedroom. It was lavender, and had call waiting, and I loved it! I got to live in a neighborhood for the first time on Val Terrace, with a cul de sac at the end of the street! I always felt safe there, and it was around that cul de sac that I learned that I could ride a ten speed bike in circles for hours. It was big, in fact it held 7 people in two slightly separate houses, my grandparents lived in the in-law apartment. Now I know that it’s bigness would be its downfall because 33 years later, what do two people need such a big house for? But back then, it was perfect! Safe, and welcoming, and the center for all of the major events of my life.

It’s not just my happy place from my childhood though. Even as an adult who has had 3 homes of her own, when I say I’m going home I always picture mom and dad’s house. Mom and dad standing in the driveway waving us in, or coming out from the back porch with big smiles. I always comment on how pretty mom’s gardens look, and not just because I know she’s been sprucing them up for company, but also because it’s true. That first hug in the driveway and I can literally feel all the stress of the long drive, or the current life messes melt away. It is the place where everything will be ok.

Val Terrace is special to my kids too! They have grown up vacationing there every summer. They love climbing the trees in the front yard, and playing hide and seek in the basement. I remember when we planted those trees. The back porch is one of my favorite places. With all the windows open you can enjoy the New England summer, without the mosquitos that lurk just outside. To me, it is the perfect place for a nice cup of coffee with breakfast, as I listen to the leaves blow on the trees and feel the cool ocean breeze. To my kids, it is the perfect place for hatching wild and crazy plans. There have been sword fights on that porch between kids in Viking helmets, and plays put on there. Oh, and I hope I never forget the summer of the chipmunk! The porch played a big role in that too! The chipmunks were everywhere, gorging themselves on the birdseed that fell from my parent’s bird feeders, so my sister’s kids and mine decided only one thing could be done. They must be caught! They used a clear bin, a stick, and a long rope, all of which they contrived into a makeshift trap that they thoughtfully set up right under the feeder. They would all sit and watch from their chairs on the porch. For fun there were binoculars involved, even though they were in no way needed. When a chipmunk came for his snack, zip, they’d give the rope a tug and catch him. Then they would all run out and get a good close look at him in his trap before lifting it up and setting up the whole game again. The next morning, Trevor came down for breakfast and said in his squeekly little boy voice, “It feels like a great day for catching chipmunks”. A line that is now part of the family.

I could go on probably forever, recalling weddings, graduation parties, family reunions, anniversary parties, vacations with family, and then with different friends joining in the fun. I could recall people dropping in for a visit because they always knew where to find you. I could recall snowmen in the front yard, and watching snow flakes fall in the light form the little lamp posts by the front walk. With a big smile I could tell of how my mom makes snow angel videos for the southern grandchildren in the yard after every big storm. I could tell you of the basketball hoop in the driveway, and of the driveway championships that were held there. And I’m not gonna say none of it would have been possible without that house, but I will say that none of it happened without the house. That house played a big part in my life over the past 33 years. It could have all happened somewhere else. I know that. But the fact is that it didn’t. It happened there on Val Terrace in Scarborough, Maine where my parents have had the same phone number since I was born.

Change is hard for people like me. I guess I could take the last half of that sentence off; change is hard. I’m thankful for the past that we have had there in our family home. I’m excited for my parents, and what lies ahead for them. It’s going to be all good things, happening in a much smaller, more appropriate setting for two people. What will become of my house on Val Terrace? I don’t know, but I hope the next little girl that lives there knows what a blessed little girl she is.