I remember the house on Torrey Lane. I can remember the layout and the surroundings, but I can’t remember the color of it. I think it might have been light blue? Surely I have pictures laying around somewhere. I know for a fact that somewhere there is a photo of my father and I standing beside the house, proudly presenting the massive snowman we had built. Funny enough, I can remember details from that photograph. I know I was wearing a puffy pink coat and my dad was wearing a thin green jacket. The cold has never seemed to bother him.  He walks around in shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops all year.

I’m not sure why this house is the one that came to mind for this exercise. It was an odd time in my youth. I have more memories of this place than of any of my other childhood homes, though my memories are fragmented.

I have a strong memory of laying on my parent’s bed with my sister. We may have been home sick. Or maybe we were just home alone. I don’t know why we weren’t in the living room. We were laying on their bed watching television. Maybe we were trying to escape our Furbies. They used to turn on by themselves, but only ever at night. We were convinced it was the work of a ghost. Anyway, we were watching TV. Thing Mama was laying on the bed with us. At one point, she turned toward the bathroom and started growling. We tried to calm her down, but she wouldn’t stop. None of the other cats were in the room. We followed her gaze but didn’t see anything. We both started to get scared. We were cold. The hair on our arms started to rise at the same time. Thing’s growling grew more intense. We couldn’t take it anymore. We ran out of there.

What else do I remember about my time in this house? I remember the time my grandmother came to visit from Pasco. We used to go visit her every summer, but one time she came to see us. I remember my brother giving her a hard time. My parents used to react differently to my brother. They had their own ways of dealing with him. My dad would shout. My mom would give into his demands and then go cry. My grandma simply refused to play his games. She locked him inside his bedroom and sat on a chair outside his door for hours. He would yell nasty things at her but she just sat there and knitted, only occasionally responding. If I recall correctly, she said more to my sister and I than she did to him. We were both yelling at him, trying to get him to stop and leave her alone. We underestimated her strength, I guess.

I got my first blood blister when I was living in this house. I’m very clumsy and I slammed the very heavy garage door shut on one of my fingers.

Speaking of the garage door… the mechanical garage door used to open and close by itself. It only ever happened when we kids were alone. We’d always rush to the door, expecting to see our parents, waiting to help them carry in the groceries. But they were never there. We thought for sure it was a ghost (you see there’s a theme here), but our parents insisted it was just because our neighbors were using their remotes to open their garages and somehow it was opening ours, too. I’ve never heard of that happening, but I suppose it’s possible.

I used to go out into the woods a lot. The woods were safer than the field (in a way), because there were snakes there. However, there were mountain lions and at one point there had been a string of cougar attacks somewhat near our house. I remember hearing on the news that you could scare away cougars by banging two sticks together while you walked. I remember thinking it was silly for a cat that big to be afraid of sticks banging together but I was sure to grab two before I ever entered the forest, and I smacked them together the whole time. I never did see a cougar while I was living there, but I wanted to. I used to get so excited whenever we’d wake up and find their tracks in our backyard. My parents were never as amused by this.