Location, location, location

I’ve been “working” on a Book of Me scrapbook for years. By working on it I mean I’ve been collecting journaling prompts and making notes about the album. I even purchased the album – a beautiful jewel tone 12x12 album that I adored the first time I saw it and, at the time, was the most expensive album I had ever purchased. I haven’t actually completed a single page in it but need to get started on all the journaling that will be required for it. One of the journaling prompts asks, “How many houses/apartments have you lived in during your life?” I had to stop to count but the final count on all residences is thirteen to date.

I lived in a small house in Birmingham, AL when I was first born that I have no recollection of at all. We soon moved to another small house a few blocks away where I lived until I was six. I loved this little home because I had my own room, a playroom off the kitchen just big enough for a little table for tea parties, a little playhouse in the back yard where I would play with my backdoor neighbors Cathy and Carol, and a huge hedge across the backyard separating my house from theirs where seemingly-thousands of lightning bugs seemed to congregate on hot summer evenings. Dad also had a workshop out back where he would let me hammer to “help” anytime I wanted. When I went back to look at this house years later, it was so much smaller than I remembered.

My dad was transferred to Mobile, AL when I was six and he and I moved in temporarily with my grandparents who lived there until my parents could sell the other house and find a rental house. They lived on a quiet cove and I loved visiting them and staying there. We soon moved into a rental house and shortly thereafter, my grandfather was transferred to Birmingham, AL! I don’t remember a lot about the rental house except one of our neighbors had a tree in their yard that I thought was the biggest tree in the whole world. We lived in this house while our new home was being built.

The house I lived in for the next eleven years was on Stonemill Run in Mobile. It was a brown house with a stone front, a long front porch, a tiny playroom for my toys (unair-conditioned though I never seemed to mind that when I was little), and a bedroom that I loved. I had a closet that I would crawl into the back of and find my “secret space” where I later had a John Stamos poster on the wall, a pillow against the wall, and my diary in a shoe box. I had great friends who lived on that street with me. My best friend Johnny lived next door and, when his family moved away, a wonderful new friend named Vail Rumley moved in. People usually thought we were sisters as we both had blonde hair and were so much alike. I had another friend down the street named Kelly and she and I would slide down the hill three doors down to pick wild raspberries. That hill was later flattened and houses were built there which always made me a little sad.

When I was eighteen, I packed my bags and moved to the other end of the state. I moved into a dormitory at the University of North Alabama called Rice Hall. Over the next two years I would reside in two different rooms (though I’ve counted this as a single residence). The rooms provided ample bookshelves and desk space though I always thought the closet space was lacking, particularly when I moved into a three-person room with two of my friends and we had to share two closets. Not an easy task for three clothes-obsessed college girls. We did a lot of sharing!

My first summer as a college student, I moved into a dorm at Shocco Springs Baptist Conference Center to work as a summer staffer. I shared a small room and one closet with two other girls and we had a blast. The following summer I lived in LaGrange Hall on campus with another friend for a few months while school was in session then, when they kicked us out between semesters, a friend of my roommate’s let us move in with him. He had a two bedroom apartment, lived alone, and traveled frequently for work.

Soon I moved into my first apartment. I thought it was the most wonderful slum apartment in the world. I could always tell people which one was mine because there was a shingle falling off the roof right above the door that the landlord would never fix. It was a townhouse within walking distance of campus (though I usually drove to school because I was always running late and usually had to go straight to work from class). The kitchen was decorated in the most awful 70s avocado green and everything else was stark white. There were far more bad things than good about the apartment, the neighbors, and the neighborhood that I could point out now but it was mine and I adored it.

As an aside, while moving from dorm to dorm and apartment to apartment, I had a total of ten roommates in five years. Perhaps I should write sometime about what I learned from living with each one! Living with people is a tricky business that must be renegotiated with each person. No two roommates are alike and you have to be extremely flexible in dealing with each – after all, the home belongs to both of you! However, I wouldn’t trade any of the experiences and anyone who never had a roommate really missed out on an important life experience, in my opinion.

When I moved to Memphis I moved into a small one bedroom apartment just off Poplar Avenue called Poplar Pines. A train track ran right by the complex which took a lot of getting used to for me. While the closet was huge (the first walk-in closet I ever had), the kitchen was so tiny that I never did get used to cooking in there though I tried to frequently as Doug and I lived there and had our first Christmas as husband and wife there along with seven members of our family… in 800 square feet of apartment! Good thing we all get along.

We quickly outgrew that apartment as most of our wedding gifts had been relegated to a storage facility and, combined, we had more books than we had wall space for bookshelves. We started looking for another place and soon found a delightful condo for rent just a few minutes away. We had super landlords who allowed me to paint and stencil to really make this place my own – another first as my previous landlords wouldn’t allow this. The complex was quiet except that it was next door to a hospital so we would occasionally hear the screaming sirens from the ambulance bay. Additionally, something in the hospital would frequently interfere with our cable television reception and that didn’t sit well with me.

A few years later we decided we had spent enough money on rent without any return and decided to purchase a house. After many, MANY Saturdays looking at houses in and around the Memphis area, we decided that we really couldn’t find anything already built that we loved. We decided to purchase a new construction and settled on Southaven, MS for its excellent schools, quieter neighborhoods, significantly lower crime rates, rock bottom property taxes and costs, and significant growth potential in home value (the county is the fastest growing county in Mississippi and one of the fastest growing in the US). We spent many more Saturdays riding through neighborhoods and visiting model homes. We finally decided on ST subdivision and a small lot (the smallest one still available) on BD. We signed the papers and started construction in the fall of 1999 and moved in about five months later.

I loved this house the day we moved in and still do. I have a significant emotional attachment to this home as well. This was the first house we purchased. This house represented a lot of decisions we made together to turn it from a simple house into a home. This was the home we brought our son to just two days after his birth and the only home he has known. This is the home where we've hosted our friends and family for many gatherings. I’ve put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this home. We moved into the house on a freezing cold day with a torrential downpour drenching us with each trip to the moving truck. We finally got used to the planes flying overhead as we found out we are living under one of the flight paths for the Memphis International Airport which services all the FedEx planes from midnight until 5am. We worked with my parents to finish out the bonus room ourselves where I discovered I am apparently allergic to fiberglass insulation and have no construction talents. Doug, with the help of his mom and cousin, painted that room just days before Joel arrived so we could move our study up there to create a nursery downstairs. I love this home and, when it is time for residence number fourteen for me, I’ll be a little sad to leave it behind.