Soul Journal - Part 6

For this step we were to recreate a home were we felt happiest and safe. Though I feel happy and safe in my present home, I wanted to recreate the home where I spent many summers of my early life.

Though I was born in Ohio, when I was about three my father's job required him to transfer to New Jersey but every summer my mother would take us children back to Ohio to our grandparents house. We would leave the week after school got out and come home the week before it started again. I loved going there.

This re-creation isn't exactly how their house looked, of course, but in reality, it wasn't a very big house anyway! For a number of years my grandparents actually lived in a very small motorhome on the property with an outhouse! I hated to have to use the outhouse. Yuck! I was use to modern conveniences back in NJ. It was more the bugs and the snakes I had to encounter on my way than the smell that I hated.

My grandfather, with the help of my mother, built the house pretty much on his own. It had a living room, two bedrooms, a kitchen and small laundry room and - hold onto your pants - a real indoor bathroom!!! It was actually one of the first in the neighborhood and I remember bringing friends into the house to show it to them! :-) But, this one had something we didn't even have - a built-in tub with no feet. At the time, we still had a bathtub with the claw feet (I would love to have one now!)


The only bad part about my summers in Ohio was that my dad couldn't be there. He had to stay home and work. But, I did get to see lots of cousins, aunts and uncles.


A few years ago when my DD, her 2 children and one of my other grandsons went to Ohio for a family reunion, my cousin took me back to see the house where my grandparents lived. The basic structure of it was the same, but I could see some additions. Plus, there were lots of trees growing that were only saplings the last time I had been there. For some reason, the yard looked a whole lot smaller than I remember.


Not to change the subject, but doesn't it seem funny to go back and see things that you knew as a child that looked so big but now as an adult seem so small. I remember the same feeling when I went back to my old elementary school. The chairs were so tiny!! :-)


I will always cherish my summers spent in Ohio as a child with fond, wonderful, funny and happy memories.