The house that built me...

Have you heard this song by Miranda Lambert? It always gets to me. I don't know exactly why. If you haven't heard it here are some of the lyrics....

I know they say you can’t go home again
I just had to come back one last time
Ma’am I know you don’t know me from Adam
But these handprints on the front steps are mine

Up those stairs in that little back bedroom
Is where I did my homework and I learned to play guitar
I bet you didn’t know under that live oak
My favorite dog is buried in the yard

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing
Out here it’s like I’m someone else
I thought that maybe I could find myself

If I could walk around I swear I’ll leave
Won’t take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me

You leave home and you move on and you do the best you can
I got lost in this old world and forgot who I am

I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing
Out here it’s like I’m someone else
I thought that maybe I could find myself
If I walk around I swear I’ll leave
Won’t take nothing but a memory
From the house that built me

It's not that I feel lost here or that I feel like I am broken here or don't know who I am. It's just that there's NO feeling like being in my childhood home. There's no safer place in the world for me. There was a lot laughs there, a lot of tears, happiness, and pain. But all of that made me who I am today. And I love going "home." And I am lucky, unlike in the song, my dad still lives there, so I can go home and feel that "feeling" anytime I want to. And thanks to my youngest sister, Frankie, for taking these photos. I will love them always!

My childhood home

I was truly built by this home. It makes who I am. Every single room is full of a dozen memories, good or bad. Every single inch of this home tells me the stories of my childhood. Not even just the inside of the home. Growing up on a farm, you spend a lot of time outside. And we did. We played from morning til night.

This is where the bus stopped to pick us up everyday for school. Until, we got our license, or we got grounded. That is a great punishment for a high schooler. Being forced to ride the bus. Since this was a small school, the bus was full of kindergartners to seniors. The bus itself has a million memories. This tree also always had mushrooms growing around the trunk and I remember racing my sisters to see who could stomp on them all.

South Road

This is what my dad refers to as the "South Road." It's never in as good condition as the "East Road." He always wanted us to use the east road. Safer, he thought. This road is where we would ride our favorite horse, Copper. I loved that horse, and if you know me, I'm not much for animals. I was so sad when he died. This is also where I hit a deer, well one of the many. This road is also where I was nearly killed, yes KILLED by a stampede of cattle. My dad had me and my younger sister, Darci, "guard" this road and scare off the cattle as he was herding them to my grandma's house. I don't know how old I was, maybe around 10. She was 6 or 7 I believe. Our job was to make sure NO cattle came down this road. We were equipped with a whip. Yes, a whip. Of course, the cattle started charging down the road. How was I supposed to stop them? With a whip? Yeah, right. I took off to the house (running in between all of the cattle) as FAST as I could, leaving my poor little sister to fend for herself in the middle of the cattle stampede. My dad, well, he wasn't very happy. He had to try and round the cattle all back up before they got to the highway. Needless to say, that was the LAST time he asked me to help herd cattle unless I was on a three-wheeler.

This picture is behind our house, and on the left is a "forest" that we played pretend a lot in. We would play castles and swords, hide and go seek, and it was so much bigger in my imagination than when I go back and look at it now. Cow tanks became forts, huge hunk of metal a tee pee, and nearby were two wooden "buildings." We would climb the beams inside and have so much fun just pretending. There was a "lake" back there. Well, we thought it was a lake and swam in it. I didn't know until afterwards that it was sewage and run off from the cattle fields. Nice. Really, I am pretty impressed that I am still alive today. From climbing farm buildings to jumping haystacks to Papa giving the "neighborhood" (we all lived miles apart) rides with the horse pulling a homemade buggy. As I remember, it looked like bus seats on a sheet of metal, but still, it was so much fun.

At  night, we had just as much fun. You haven't lived unless you've played hide and go seek in the dark. That was fun inside, or outside the house. If you've ever been in the house, there's a lot of places to hide, which makes the game so much fun. Flashlight tag, and running through the cornfields trying to find each other. So. Much. Fun.

I could really go on for days about how much fun we had just playing outside. And it makes me kind of sad to know that my children won't have that. They will have a great childhood, and I hope they have fond memories, but it can't be like mine. We will probably never live on a farm, it's not considered safe to let your children run all over the place outside all day long, and they will probably have more fun texting their friends than jumping haystacks. Or at least they think. I think next time we go to Papa's farm, I am going to take Callie out on the four wheeler to some of my old favorite spots. Will I let her swim in the sewage or climb the buildings, no. But when she is older, we will jump haystacks together.... and I hope Papa never asks her to help him herd cattle!