My old house, where I took my first steps, said my first words, and spent the first seven years of my life . It’s seen every high, every low, and every in between of each episode of my life . When my house was filled with all four members of my family permanently and our young  and novice minds didn’t have to worry. 

I drive past it as if it's a monument, like a celebrity's house you go and see on vacation . Wondering if a family like ours now fills the home and if it looks just the same as it did when I lived there. If there was one thing I wanted to do it would be being able to step back into that home, that neighborhood, the environment where I felt so comfortable as a kid to form the childhood times I had. 

Uncaring, worryless,adventurous are the only words to describe the type of person I was growing up. Looking back, my relationship with my brother is something I wish I was less uncaring about. If someone were to see us now compared to then they would not even recognize us being siblings, rather friends. I got used to the ,“ Kaitlin your grounded “ after seeing my brother once walking down the stairs for school. Now he’s off in college, about to graduate and start a life of his own, yet we seem to tolerate each other to a respectable level that I appreciate and admire much more than I had before. But having that gap in my house, being the only child, takes me back to the times where my family as a whole would be all together all the time, rather than parts of summer and weekends here and there. 

We all have places that we consider the places we grew up. We can grow up through relationships. We can grow up through places. We can grow up through finding ourselves. But at my old house, I did all of these things that paved the life I live today.  Were I assimilated the ideas of and culture of my families and made them my own.