6th Grade SCR #5

Losing Home

I never want to see another cardboard box again! I thought as I flung the empty box next to what seemed like seven million others. “Vasant’s Room” was written on the side of each in black permanent marker, each box with more furious-looking lettering than the last. The increasingly messy scrawl reflected my growing frustration.

The angrily packed boxes were going to the same place—away from here. Away from my amazing house at 1502 Cherry Lane.

Away from board games in front of the fireplace.

Away from walking my dog through the woods behind the house.

Away from the rumble that sounded through the floor when my parents came home from work, opening the garage.

Thinking about how I was being forced to give all of that up soured my expression. My dad popped his head into my room and said, “And how’s the packing going in here? Oh! Is something wrong?”

“Nothing,” I muttered. “I hate packing.”

“Yeah, everyone does,” he said with a sigh. “Moving is always a hassle.”

Then why are we doing it?! I wanted to ask him. Why didn’t I get a say in leaving the house that I’ve lived in my whole life? Sure, the new house was bigger. It had the kind of kitchen that my parents had always drooled over when watching shows about people buying their dream houses.

But was our kitchen really that bad? We made dinner there every day, and had people over for Thanksgiving every year, and everyone would end up in the kitchen, with all the uncles and aunties acting like experts about how to cook everything. My cousins and I would laugh at the ridiculous arguments they would get into about the pies, and then we’d go throw a football around in the backyard. Who cared about a shiny new kitchen?

I couldn’t keep it in anymore. “Why do we have to leave this house?” I exploded. “I like this house!”

“Oh,” said my dad, sighing, and sitting on the bed. “I know, beta. I’m going to miss the house too. Your Ma and I have been doing a lot of reminiscing about the last few years.”

“Then why are you so excited to leave?!”

“Vasant, you know how I sometimes tell too many stories about my childhood, and you and your sister are always saying to us, ‘Not this story again!’?”

“Yeah?”

“I loved the house I grew up in too—so sunny and bright, with a gorgeous garden. I missed it when I left to come to America. I sometimes wished I could go back. But I realized that the memories were what I missed—not the bricks, or the walls, or the roof. I missed being a little kid, playing with my brothers, coming home and smelling dinner cooking.”

“I’m going to miss stuff like that too,” I said.

“And you’ll always have those memories,” my dad said, looking around. “This house has been good to us. It’s the place where your Ma and I brought you home as a baby. It has kept us safe and happy as you and your sister grew older, and now it’s time for it to keep another family safe and happy, don’t you think?”

“I guess.”

“And aren’t you excited about the new memories you’re going to form in the new house? It’s exciting, isn’t it? One day you’ll grow up and leave that house too, and you can smile about all the things that happened there.”

“Off to make new memories?” I asked with half a smile.

“Just like me when I was a young man!” my dad said. “No matter where you are or where you go, of course you’ll miss the past. But the great memories linger and follow you everywhere.”

I thought about what he said for a moment. “Baba, do you think we can look at the listing for the new house again?”

My dad smiled and pulled up the pictures on his phone. I looked through them, thinking about how I would decorate my new room—and how I would hang out in the new room, building new memories even as I continued to remember 1502 Cherry Lane.