The House that Built Me Housewarming Party

When I first heard this song by Miranda Lambert, The House that Built Me, I was driving down the road. And it was just one of those things....I became overcome with emotion. It was if she had read my thoughts about what I think of when I think of home.

My first thought was what I knew it as my Grandmother's home, though it was actually my Great grandparents home. Many families, children and grandchildren passed through its doors. In my family it is referred to as "the Collinsville House".  It's where so many members of my family (cousins, aunts, uncles, greats) have special memories that derived from that home.

I also included 2 links to my blog with stories from the quilt walk. I think you may have seen it, but if not....

http://lbratina.blogspot.com/2008/09/grandmas-house.html
http://lbratina.blogspot.com/2008/10/scenes-from-collinsville-and-its-quilt.html

Speaking for myself, I grew up in Hoover, Alabama in a community on Shades Mountain called Bluff Park.
We moved into that home when I was a year old the year was 1971. My parents moved out of it when I was twenty nine years old. It was a wonderful place to grow up. No one moved to and from....the neighbors I had, I had my entire life. We were more like a family.
I have so many wonderful memories of living at that home. From the huge old oak tree that shaded the entire back yard, and the sadness we all felt when it came down in a storm (like the loss of a loved one)...to hitting homeruns in games of backyard baseball, and breaking neighbors windows with some of those homerun balls. My parents hosted holiday celebrations there. One of my favorites was one Christmas my mother had put my brother and I to rolling sausage balls at the kitchen table. It was one of the coldest Christmas Eve's on record. I remember seeing flurries flying past the flood lights as I rolled and shaped the balls. Suddenly the faces of two men popped up in the window. It was my uncles surprising us to spend Christmas with us.
I have often wondered if the poems I wrote throughout my childhood still survive behind the doors of my old bedroom closet. And if the old Rose of Sharon bush does, and the climbing rose bush in the back of the house. I can probably still show you the creek in the stairs, that I avoided when I woke early on a Saturday morning to watch cartoons while my parents slept in.
At that home, I remember bringing home my first dog. A dachshund named Cindy, after Cindy Brady of the Brady Bunch. It was also at that home fifteen years later that I buried her under that birch in the back yard. Cindy was my first best friend.
My next door neighbor, Debby Morave, was my second. Under the roof of my house we played barbies and discussed boys. That house on North Sherrlyn Drive will always hold a piece of home to me. The tracings are still there. Like the time I used nail polish and wrote the names of my friends in the neighborhood on the brick wall out by the drive. Those names are still there, visable. Tracings of the past. And though we have all moved away, a part of us will always remain. I still keep in contact with my old neighbors. We share Christmas cards, an occassional reunion...but more than that, memories.

It's the House that built me. Shaped me. To be me, the person that I am today.
I'd love to hear about your "roots", I hope




Now, Won't you Share about the House that Built You!