Kaleigh Downing
8-8-12

“The existence of forgetting has never been proved: We only know that some things don't come to mind when we want them," Friedrick Nietzsche. By that token such a surplus of life changing events, people and experiences seem to escape me when they are needed the most. In all of the hustle and bustle of my twenty years one place remains ingrained in me like yesterday – my families old farm house. What a humble building on some land that soon became a sanctuary for me. To call it home is appropriate, the nostalgia it holds and the comfort that the memory still provides.

First, the once proud building that stood is now ceasing to exist, having the boards warp and the hay take over the front porch. It had never been overly grand, much more familiar than anything else. Nestled up on the ridge far from the steady hum of town with nothing but crickets singing in the night, it’s not very hard to see how someone could fall in love with the country lifestyle so quickly. However, we were not allowed to renovate due to seven siblings owning a share of the property. Because of our situation, those old wooden floors and flowered wall paper never quite what struck me as home and very quickly I realized the only place I felt truly at peace was just outside my bedroom – high above the yard on the roof. The cracked shingles were constantly piled high with blankets, dinners and books throughout my childhood, along of course with whatever the squirrels decided to share.

Next, fast forward a bit and although I’m not a child I still could never get enough of the breath taking view my roof held for me. Throughout the years, the teen melodramas, and squabbles with mom made it become a place to shed every aching part of me. Eventually it became quite the literal escape route as I convinced my mother to slide the trampoline to the side, and late night rendezvouses took place. How much easier it was to jump off the roof then down the tattle tale floorboards