Personal Narrative: The Little Tan House With Green Shutters

You never truly know how much someone means to you until they are gone. All of the hot summer days spent at her house, the home cooked meals for lunch, the daily routine of watching game shows on GSN, the hours and hours of playing monopoly, and working the concession stand at Evans Park for the summer are now just cherished memories that I have with my grandma.

Every family event, it always ended up at my grandmother’s home. I feel as though my grandmother did an amazing job at hosting the family gatherings. She is great at keeping the family so tight. We all come together because of her, ad I hope our generations of family members will keep that alive. With that being said I cherish every moment that was held in that house, all my memories are there.

When I got out of the red truck I went inside squirmy through the cold wet leaves. My dad left. When I was inside my mom said,” Go find pajamas.” So I changed out of my sweaty basketball clothes and into a shirt and sweatpants. Had a couple Oreo cookies and watched “COPS”.

My old house was a huge part of my childhood. I lived there for 10 years. All of my childhood memories were made at.

I love that house we had so many memories in that house we group up there. I still remember my room. My room was decorated as princesses. What I love the most about my house was that my house was six blocks from my first elementary but once we move schools our house was only three block away from juanita jones elementary. When I was in 5th grade I came home one day and my parents and my neighbors had received a letter from the government saying that we had to move houses because they were going to expand the freeway so my parent started to find other houses I was sad about leaving I love that house I had so many memories. My house was next to a small liquor store call Bob's market. My sisters and i would always go to Bob's market before we went to school he would always give us free candy we still go and visit bob and his wife since our house is nearby but we don't visit as much.

I didn't always live in California. Before California I lived in Denver, Colorado. Before Denver I lived in Aurora, Colorado. When we moved to california we had a family of five. We moved to California, when I was six, Then we lived at my grandma’s house in Riverside for a year. We found a place on Ferree Street and that became our home.

The poetry of Cathy Song is a flowing collection of soft spoken and colorful imagery. She gently weaves her thoughts into an imaginative yet graceful story that has an overall sensual tone to it. Cathy invites the reader into her personal sanctuary of memories. She allows the reader to share in some of her most personal and critical moments in life. Some may think these things mundane but, when reading her poetry you can feel how utterly important they are to her. This can be evidenced in her poem The White Porch. Cathy uses this poem to allow the reader to participate in that moment of a woman’s life when she realizes that she is no longer a child.

On April 1, 2000, I was placed into a group home because of my behavior at the home. My dad and I didn’t get along. So he sent me to a placed called Bowman House. When I arrived there the first person I met was a lady name Alexander, she begin showing me around the units. Alexander was called the granny of the units. It was two units for the boys and girls. She took me to the boys unit first to look at the units. After I looked at the boys unit she took me to the girls unit. Where I would be staying. I had the chance to bond with Alexander, it wasn’t something I was trying to do it just happen. I had to stay with Alexander until the staff came back from picking the other peers up from school. An hour pass and the peers came back I had to go

When I think about my red house, a free and easy feeling rushes over. Worries consisted of macaroni being too hot, swinging too high, and Dora, my first dog, pooping in my room. With bookshelves filled with stuffed animals and countless Pooh Bear toys, I was always content. The playground in my backyard provided days of fun, and nights in my mom and dad’s bed gave me peaceful and comforting sleep, preparing me for the next day of work. The kitchen was where I liked to claim I “worked”. Although I didn’t do a lot of the actual cooking, I liked to be there while my mom was. A love for cooking and baking developed at a young age, around the same time I realized I wanted to be just like my mom. The song “Best Day” by Taylor Swift perfectly describes

So I wait for grandma to get the milk and plates, so we both can sit and discuss our time away from each other. I was only 6 at the time my grandma first started making the cookies for me. So of course, all that was on my mind was the taste of grandma’s sweet cookies that made me fill like those were the best on earth, and no one could tell me different! Mom would be by the stove stuffing her face with her favorite lemon cake and hot tea, while me and grandma share our time together.

Far down a dusty highway sat a quaint little neighborhood in the rural sides of Indiana. This suburban edition went by the title of Stable Acres. The roads were old and scared with lines of tar and gravel to fill the streets riddled with potholes. The thin asphalt path snaked around trees and other houses. In my grey suede car seat, I could feel our maroon car, with interior the color of sand, come to a smooth complete stop. Outside there was a house painted a deep rich red and a concrete driveway that was also very tan. Past the windows you could see dainty ivory lace curtains that kept out the harsh sunlight. Suddenly, my car door would be opened, and my mother would place my one hand into my second home, my grandmother.

Dutch Hills mobile home park is the earliest neighborhood that I remember. My parents were divorced when I was three and my mom and I moved around a lot until we came to this place when I was about six. We lived in this mobile home park for about four years before we moved to Bath, Michigan where my family continues to reside today. We lived in Lot #13 on a small cul-de-sac near the back of the “upper park” of this community. We first moved here from Ovid, Michigan and moved in with my uncle. He lived there for about a year and shortly after he moved out my mom met my future step-father and they married when I was eight.

My house has been a huge part of my life. My house was built with dark red bricks. It is big and I have a large backyard with a hammock. It has many characteristics that make it important, but these are a few. My house is meaningful to me considering I have had so many memories of my friends and family there. It also keeps me safe when there is a storm or bad weather. In conclusion, I love many items from my childhood, but my house is one of my favorites.

The fleeting changes that often accompany seasonal transition are especially exasperated in a child’s mind, most notably when the cool crisp winds of fall signal the summer’s end approaching. The lazy routine I had adopted over several months spent frolicking in the cool blue chlorine soaked waters of my family’s bungalow colony pool gave way to changes far beyond the weather and textbooks. As the surrounding foliage changed in anticipation of colder months, so did my family. My mother’s stomach grew larger as she approached the final days of her pregnancy and in the closing hours of my eight’ summer my mother gently awoke me from the uncomfortable sleep of a long car ride to inform of a wonderful surprise. No longer would we be returning

I went upstairs by my dad and my sister, Ashley, and kept bothering my mom saying, “Let’s go!” Then finally about twenty minutes later my mom came out to the living room and said, “Let’s head out to grandmas and grandpas.” I bolted down the stairs and put on my old, white, sneaker shoes.