Home was Where My Heart Was

Like everyone I grew up in a town. In a state, in a culture, nation, time, and place.
It's a frame of reference.
Today as I am sitting waiting for a washer repair person, who is late, very late, and I'm growing concerned as my washer is 7 days broken, a friend from my hometown in West Virginia sent a picture of the house where I lived from age 8 until my Mother lost it after my father divorced her and the care of her mother dying with Alzheimer's broke her. Not that this is important but I never imagined I would lose my home. So seeing it in the only picture I really have is rather interesting-it looks good to me.

I see it has gained cement, lost the mulberry tree and added a much nicer door on the front.
Perhaps the windows are also better.  It's so odd to peer from here to there over the internet.
This house would not know me.

This house appears in my dreams, nightmares and is a source of feeling loss. I would love to be able to have my home, return to it. Isn't that impossible?
Thomas Wolfe said it was.
That was a kind of comfort.

We always referred to this house by it's numbers and street. I'm thinking about that because the friend sending the picture did too. My father after he left for his fairer pastures would spit it out like a curse. But I haven't referred to other places I lived in that way. Some I called names-I currently live in a house I call the "Compound." But this one is stuck with 1426 Roosevelt Street. Forever.

I could tell you tales of this house, it could tell better ones, I'm sure one day here I will. I doubt six cats still call it home-nor any ducks. A hamster probably isn't roaming the basement furnace room. I once dreamed that furnace room was enormous and full of amazing toys as if it were an endless playroom, though slightly in boxes and tunnels. Still a vivid memory- that never happened. So much of my life was spent there. Once.

A point of connection. An old friend.