House on Mulberry Street

The journey back seemed to last longer than I remembered. I hadn't been here in decades-- I hadn't watched the way the world changed from inside of this bubble. Instead I was a part of a different world-- a city that changed daily-- even hourly at times. I had become used to the pace of my city, but now coming back all I wanted was the simplicity of these moments. The predictability of it all. 

I turned the car onto the street I had known so well-- for so long, and began to get nervous. Would I remember it the way it had been? Would I still be able to recall all the memories? And there it was. The house on Mulberry Street. It had changed a little. The color of the outside had once been yellow, but today it's been updated to a neutral white. Less noticeable, less garish, less personality. I had remembered it being bigger-- more majestic. But maybe that memory had only existed for when I was young and small. The neighborhood hadn't changed much since I lived here. Still mostly families with kids, but now these families live differently, talk differently and all seem younger than when my parents first moved here. 

It is amazing how much has changed in my life, but some things continue to remain frozen in time.

The large oak in the front lawn that I had skinned my chin on when I was seven still lives outside the once yellow house. The fence that enclosed us in our space, kept us protected, had a fresh coat of paint-- reminding me of the sunny Saturday morning my dad built it. The driveway-- just as wide and smooth as it had been when my sister and I first drove the family car around the block for practice. 

Everything-- a memory of what used to be. 

It has been thirty years since I lived here, thirty-four since I first moved out. The years seem to be a blur of memories. How can time move so quickly?

I had never imagined being here, in front of this house again, but the motion of my life led me back. It's been a decade since my sister and I sold our childhood home-- the last remaining possession that reminded us of our parent's struggle to make it in this world. 

I had refused to fly across the country to finalize the sale. My sister had always been the better one with matters such as these-- organized, meticulous about every detail. When the sale was settled I buried myself in my current life, refusing to remind myself of the past. I focused on my writing and refused to let the regret find its way into me. 

But regret has an annoying way of finding you. The thoughts of not saying goodbye to this home ran through the pages of my writing-- it would come up while I drank my morning coffee and at night it would find me in my dreams. 

I wondered what I had missed by not going inside one more time. I wondered if I would ever have closure in my life-- at least this part of it. 

But now, standing outside of the house I'm realizing that maybe it was always meant to be this way. 

I closed my eyes and replayed my life here. The times my sister and I would mow the lawn, wash the windows and run around the front lawn. 

I can almost hear my mother crying the first time she found out that I was moving to the other side of the country. Later on, the walls echoing with the sounds of our weekly telephone calls we used to have across the country-- across time zones: reminders for both of us that someone on the other end still cared. 

I can still taste the first traditional Thanksgiving dinner my mother cooked. How the skin on the turkey glistened golden, the table dressed fully with sides that make my stomach grumble to this day, and the unspoken reality that this would be the last time we would do this-- just us-- just us four. 

The house had seen so much. The smells that had embedded themselves into the carpet came to follow me into my numerous new homes. The tinge of garlic and sesame seed oil followed me for thirty years and even when I step into my apartment on the other side of the country I can smell it on the pages of my books and the finishes on my wooden floors. 

I remember the last night I lived in the house on Mulberry. I stayed awake until the hour I had to leave. Awake with the excitement of the places I would go, people I would meet-- the things that I would learn. 

My mother too had stayed awake all night. Sleepless in her bed she remembered the first time she had brought me here, wrapped tightly in a blanket sent from Seoul, the smell of my head-- the innocence on my face. 

I had been the first baby in the house, and she had doted on me differently than my older sister. My mother's mind worked quickly remembering all of my first times in that house-- the achievements, the failures and the disappointments. Like all mothers-- she never forgot anything. As the missteps and successes replayed back in her mind-- she remembered that she too had changed and grown as a mother and as a woman. 

The both of us had laid awake that night, neither one of us knowing about the other until years later when we would talk about how it had changed it all. 

I felt the summer breeze hit my face as I held onto the fence. I opened my eyes to see the differences of what I recalled. The house had changed and so had I. The family that had once lived there continued to live on separately, and so would every family thereafter.

And somewhere there were flowers swaying with the wind and somewhere in a different time and life I was still with my mother in the yellow house on Mulberry Street.