The White Farmhouse

When I was growing up I spent many weekends at my Aunt Lindy and Uncle Wayne's house. They had a daughter, Krin, their youngest child, who was four months older than me and we grew up much like sisters. To this day we remain close, although our lives have had divergent paths. She's the mother of a fifteen year old son, twelve year old twin sons and a six year old daughter and has been married fifteen years ... all the while I have been going to college, working, getting married and getting divorced.

This story isn't so much about us, though, as it is about my Aunt Lindy and Uncle Wayne's house.

It is a simple white farmhouse with black trim located on a county road in La Porte County, near Mill Creek. In my mind's eye I can still see the many outbuildings that dotted the two acres the house sits upon and thinking back, some of the best memories of my childhood were here.

It was here I learned to run from chickens after you take their eggs, it was here I learned to ride a gocart and it was here that I played many hours of house/school/life in one of the outbuildings. My earliest memories are of this place, a place I knew as well as my own home, and can actually still picture better than my first home.

Its circle drive, welcoming me back, calls to me at times. Those simple days of mudpies, pigtails and sunshine, running barefoot through the yard and into the nearby corn and soybean fields take me back to kidhood in a minute.

Remembering the big Newfoundland dogs, Daisy and Janey, so big and scary to others and so friendly and sweet to us. Remembering playing tag with my cousin and friends, running until we couldn't breathe. Remembering parties, laughter and whispered conversations through heat vents well past bedtime.

This is the house where I first played Atari, as my parents didn't believe in video games, sugared cereal or being indoors when it was nice. I had my first bowl of Capt'n Crunch there and after years of only eating Raisin Bran, Cheerios or Chex, it tasted *awful.*

It is also the house where I remember profound sadness, first in kidhood, then as an adult. My Aunt Lindy was killed in a car accident right outside that house, one horrible Thanksgiving morning when I was nine. I can still remember praying for her soul and for my cousins to survive. I remember seeing Krin after the accident and realizing how close it was she came to death and how close I was to losing my best friend.

Twenty-one Novembers later, my Uncle Wayne was killed in a car accident ... quite similar to Aunt Lindy's. Uncle Wayne had been a father figure to me for many years and without his presence, the house was e m p t y. No welcoming "hello there kid!," no big hugs, just an gaping shell of a house that seemed to weep for its residents as much as I did.

I used to drive by the house every time I was home, honking if I saw his car in the drive or heading down to his bar to say hello if he wasn't there. Now as I drive down that county road, whispers of my childhood dreams float in the air ... bringing me back to times long past.

Now that white farmhouse stands alone, outbuildings long gone. I heard recently that there will be an auction of the property, sometime late spring. A part of me died that day ... and a chapter of kidhood will be closed, finally, permanently. I miss those days of laughter in that old white farmhouse. The smell of my aunt's perfume, the bearhugs of my uncle and the carefree days of youth brought to a close with a bang of a gavel.