the house that built me

No song could better capture the attachment I have to the house I grew up in. Our big, red, barn of a house in Colorado holds such a huge place in my heart and an infinite number of stories, memories and secrets. It was the house where: my family and my cousins all gathered for every Thanksgiving or Christmas, we played flashlight tag in the backyard until 1am in the summertime, we dared each other to jump out of the hot tub and do somersaults in the snow, watched "Selena" on repeat in the garage apartment, rigged up a message-carrying system from room-to-room with string, bells and tiny baskets, strapped a helmet on Bekah and pushed her down the stairs in a laundry basket, worked for hours cleaning and sweeping out the garage so we could have a place to rollerblade when the ground was covered in snow, we broke the German cuckoo clock playing volleyball inside, I flashed codes from my bedroom window with a flashlight to my friend who lived on the mountain facing us, Moses the cat died a tragic death by garage door, Nate Miller taught us to drive his stick-shift Volvo when we were 11, I heard the news of 9/11 on the radio as I got ready for school, we would film fake Calvin Klein commercials and Martha Stewart kitchen segments, we could watch bald eagles soar over our backyard, hear the Roaring Fork river from open windows at night, pick wildflowers from our yard, hang lazily in a hammock for hours on end in the sunshine.



It was an amazing place to grow up.