The Island Shoe Girl's Blog

Thanksgiving Week is a time of year to be spent with family and good friends that have become our extended family.  It is also a time to show our gratitude and share our childhood memories.  This week I am sharing a little bit of the home my parents provided for me and my brothers.

Not a beach in site, the childhood home of the Island Shoe Girl. Photo by Remax Homebase.

My parents sold their home in Fairborn and moved from Ohio to South Carolina this month.  My brothers and I have already spread out across the East Coast and welcome their retirement change of scenery and the beautiful adventures it will bring them.  But with the final closing papers comes a farewell to a house on Grant Street that has always been my home.  It is the only home I ever knew from the time I was born to the day I left for college. 

Our house was not large and has never graced the covers of a home décor magazine, but it was the best place in the world for anyone to grow up.  I know the things I will miss about this house are memories that we created as a family.  I will miss running barefoot in our backyard while my Mom waters her garden.  I can still hear the basketball bouncing in the driveway from my brothers shooting hoops and smell of a fire in the chimney on winter days.  And although it has been years since I have rode my bike up the driveway to see the dining room light on, signaling a family meal, I am sad all the same that we will not gather in that room again. 

I am blessed to have never come home to an empty house; even when my parents were not home, their presence was there.  I always had a curfew with parents who really cared and worried if it was missed.  I cursed the evenings I spent studying spelling words at the kitchen table, knowing that my Dad would quiz me on them before I could watch television.  I loved the nights that the Christmas tree lights shone across the hall and into my bedroom, and the dreams of Christmas morning they brought.  On rainy days my brothers and I spent long hours in the basement letting our imagination run wild until a fight over sharing G.I. Joes would break out.  

My family has grown and matured, all of us kids are adults with homes of own now, and our house has grown up too.  The lovely red carpet in the family room that camouflaged Kool-Aid spills has been replaced with a not-so-forgiving beige.  Our kitchen has been upgraded, the dining room painted, and our bedrooms have gone from childhood rooms filled with mementos of our youth to guest rooms suited for any visitor.   Soon the sale will be complete and no longer will the little blue bedroom be “mine” in any sense of the word.  It will belong to someone new; another couple who I hope knows what a treasure they are getting. 

I now live in Key West, and while the beaches and warm breezes helped with my decision to move, I came because of career options.  I always maintain that I grew up in a great place and had many wonderful opportunities that shaped me into the person I am today.  Ohio gave me all four seasons: hiking in the spring, autumn football games, snow days in the winter and summers at the pool.  Ohio gave me neighbors who knew my name and greeted me cheerfully during college vacations.  Ohio gave me friends, farms, sweet corn, fairs, and Bob Evans’s biscuits & gravy. 

I am happy for my parents and the lovely new house they are getting.  In a time when most real estate news is dismal and depressing, it is refreshing to see a deal occur where someone gets a true dream home—a home for their retirement that rewards years of hard work.  And I am happy for the couple buying our house in Fairborn; I believe that they are getting a dream home too.  I hope that someday my bedroom belongs to one of their children, that another dog plays fetch in the backyard, and that their family celebrates birthdays around the dining room table. 

 There is something tied to a house key that keeps it lingering in a drawer even after it no longer unlocks our front door.  For anyone who has held onto a key long after a home becomes a place we used to live, my emotions and sentiments will surely be familiar. So with both joy and sadness I say a final good-bye to the house on Grant Street.  I am not sure I will see you again outside of my memories and photographs, but understand you will always have a place in my heart.  Take care of this new family as you have taken care of mine, be more than a collection of rooms— be the home you always were.