[Adventure] at My Parents' House

[Adventure 57]

At my parents' house recently, I was thinking a lot about my childhood in that house. About the artifacts of my childhood that remain there, some inexplicably so. 

I love that there's still a pop up Dixie cup dispenser in what was my sister and my bathroom. 

And that in the recesses of the linen closet in that same bathroom lives an ancient bottle of Avon bubble bath and a yellow Tupperware continer of baking soda. I can't even guess as to the age of the bubble bath - the baking soda is new, but the container is the same one that used to live in the cabinet above the refrigerator, only to see the light of day when we baked Christmas cookies. 

There are works of art bought at fairs and festivals, including artifacts large (a milk can) and small (a bell) painted by one particular artist and purchased usually at the Harvest Moon Festival in Naugatuck, CT.

There's a pile of photo albums that I will soon curl up with my children and look through, sharing stories of my childhood in this house - from my first experience in the overgrown yard at age three that had me convinced that we were moving into a house with a jungle in the back to spending the night before my wedding on the third floor with one of my maids of honor.

And there are myriad photos of family members and loved ones adorning walls and propped up on surfaces. 

The more I looked at the stuff of my childhood, I realized the memories stay alive in me, in the stories, and in the people I love. Some day I will have to say goodbye to that house and much of its content, but memories of bubble baths and baking, fairs and festivals with family, will live on.