Priceless - A New Poem

Priceless

When we lived in that house… 

My mom, who was forty, gave birth to my younger sister. I remember lifting her out of the crib when I was seven and bringing her to my mother, saying, “It’s crying….”

We had a dog named Sparky, who got a little too friendly with the purebred poodle next door, one Saturday morning. I heard the Arf, Arf Arf, but it sounded like Ow Ow Ow to me and I woke my parents yelling, “Come quick. Sparky is stuck together with another dog.”

 There was no air conditioning, but there was a noisy oil heater in the hallway wall. On cold mornings, my siblings and I would stand in front of it warming our clothes for school each day.

 I had an old green rowboat that I’d take out into the lake from the raggedy canal we lived on. I’d pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a book, row out past the canal and just float and eat and read.

 We’d sit at our pink kitchen table at breakfast, and I’d entertain my brother and sister by reading aloud everything on the cereal boxes.

 I pulled orange blossoms from the tree in the front yard and put them in a jar filled with water and baby powder – a gift of orange blossom perfume for my mom on Mother’s Day.

 I took my dad’s first edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and dog-eared all the juicy bits. I learned a new word – Fecund. It even sounded ripe and heavy on my tongue.

 My mother planted a garden in the back yard and we kids had to tend it weekly. I kept pulling the carrots out of the ground by their green tops to see how big they were getting.

 My father lived in that house until he died. I hope he’s still haunting the guy who bought it for a pittance of what it was worth.

What are your memories of the house(s) you grew up in?