House on Warren Street

Rebeka Adema

The house on Warren Street is ours. It is older then the old women that died there 52 years ago. It is old, but it does not look it. My dad is always repainting it. The summer breezes bring smells of paint thinner and sounds of scraping. The scraping is like a never-ending parade of barking dogs. He is always repainting. Painting, fixing, sprucing, scraping.

Before I was born, before I was conceived, my parents lived up stairs and down the hall in only one of its rooms, instead of in all its rooms. It was there that my parents lived, renting above the old lady who eventually passed away. When the old women left the house, all its rooms became ours.

It is big, big like my uncle who visits. And it is green. Green and red and white. And there are few more colors mixed in that get unnoticed. Then there is the porch that sits out in front like a big, lazy cat that welcomes you in. The porch, like the house, is green. Big and green like the Christmas trees my mom always passes on her way to the smaller ones sitting at the back. I sit. Me on my big, green, lazy cat porch, sitting and stewing and reading and selling organic brownies to the little girls and boys across the street that come running with nickels stuffed in theie sweaty fingers.

Inside there is coziness and warmth. A great fire. Big, corduroy chairs. It is a place for dozing because three are many big soft places to sit and hold big, obnoxious mugs full of hot chocolate. This is not a place for jumping and shouting and throwing balls although sometimes that happens too.

My house always smells of something, because there is always something cooking. Something is always calling my dad to the kitchen. Something always brewing or bubbling or whistling or steaming.

In the back is where I played when I was shorter then what I am now. There sits a swing set with a tree house overlooking a pond holding orange, swimming fish. And there are gardens of flowers everywhere I look. Pink, red, yellow, purple, green,