“Hey,” I said, “Where are we going?” As we drove down Main Street and turned onto an unfamiliar street. We had been packing the house for weeks now, and bringing home boxes from the office to put away even more things. At the age of eight, I clearly was not numb to everything that was going on; we were moving. However, this was such a strange sensation because of where we were moving, and the house, that on that first day, was not there. When we turned onto that street, there was nothing there, no house, just a large open space and a few concrete blocks. I had not yet known, but I was blessed to witness the origins of the building of the most magnificent house around. I had wondered why my grandfather brought his camera, and had been wearing a beaming smile all day long. I had also wondered why earlier in the month I had been asked which color cabinets I like from out of a catalog. As we drove up to the large plot of land and approached someone who seemed to be a construction worker of some sort (possibly the contractor), it all began to make sense; we were moving to a house that we were building ourselves. I had simply not expected this to be the case, for it is not often that any person is blessed enough to build a home of their own. My grandfather pulled out his camera, and asked the construction worker to take pictures of him, my grandmother and me next to the only thing on the land; the concrete blocks. If only at the time I had known what would grow from those concrete blocks, the seeds to our home, in which a grand tree grew in just a month or two. I could not get over the look on my grandfather’s face, a grin of sheer excitement. My grandmother’s expression runs faint in my recollection, however I could tell that she was enthused. My grandmother is often a woman of solace in the world outside of just our family, so I imagine she was happy, in her own way. I looked around for a while as my grandparents discussed plans of building with the construction worker. I noticed that the land, though empty of anything human made, was full of trees, bushes, and flowers. There was even a family of deer back in the wooded area. There was so much vast nature in what would eventually be our backyard. A few years later I would see an albino deer, the rarest of them all, and have all of our family celebrations on the large patio of that backyard. After what seemed to be an hour, my grandparents told me it was time to go, and that we would be back soon. We said goodbye to the construction worker, and got in the car to make our way back to the rest of the packing we had to do. As we got into the car my grandfather said “Next time we’re here, there will be a mansion for you.” I looked out the window, and took one last look at the empty land with the concrete blocks, knowing that the next time I came back there would be a castle in the space. He couldn’t have been more right. The next time we went there was the day we moved, and it was something I had never seen before. There were large, bold pillars, an incredibly high roof, and a garage big enough to have a hockey tournament in (which little did I know would happen a year later). It was more than the house that mattered to me, however. That was the place in which I grew through childhood; the place where I started to become a man, learn life lessons, and begin to do what was right. The car ride home from that space of land with the construction worker and the concrete was the best car ride I had ever had. I was filled with excitement, because we were about to have a dream house, and bask in the glory of my grandfather’s success. It is only now, after all the years I had spent there, that I am able to look back and realize what those concrete seeds signified. The times in that house are priceless, filled with memories I will never have again. I wish I could have told myself then of the experiences that were to come, but that’s the mystery of life. Luckily that mystery was one with a grand solution, in a grand place. I packed the rest of my boxes all by myself, toys and all, with a grin that never left my face.