Palace with a Chimney Stack

Most of us will live in more than one house as we grow up and move along through our lives. Each will hold its own memories. To me, of all the places I've called home, the house on the lane holds the most endearing memories. It was just a regular neighborhood home-with an upstairs, a closed-in porch where I'd play cards with my imaginary friends and win every time, a flagstone walkway my father and grandfather cemented in place, a cellar where you'd have to enter from the outside, a huge yard with lilac bushes and a rock garden, a kitchen with a counter where my goldfish sat, a front stairway that seemed so steep, a double living room, registers in the floor, and that chimney stack in the parlor that I thought was the most amazing contraption ever. Of course I was little. And when you're little everything seems amazing. The summer before I entered the fourth grade we moved to the country. Still to this day, a part of me remains in that house on the lane.

Maybe that's because that house was where on a Christmas morning I found what is still my most favorite Christmas present ever waiting for me when I came down those steep stairs-a pine desk my grandfather made complete with a stool and a single drawer with a pad of paper and a #2 yellow pencil inside. Or maybe that's because my bedroom was possibly the best bedroom in the world-at least to me it seemed as if that was the case. After all, it had a slanted ceiling and you'd have to walk down two steps to get inside. The room was huge-taking up the whole back of the house. It even had a stairway down to the kitchen. It was like my own apartment and I didn't even realize it. But then when you're little you don't realize how things change-and maybe that's a good thing!

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